Lithuanian PM's sister-in-law's company spends EU funding on buying from PM's company

VILNIUS - A company, which was founded last year and received more than 170,000 euros in EU funding and is now owned by Lithuanian Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas' sister-in-law, spent most of the money on buying equipment from Garnis, a company co- owned by the prime minister, Andrius Tapinas, a public figure, claims on his blog on the Substack platform.

Based in Klaipeda District, Dankora last year received almost 173,000 euros in financial support under the LEADER program administered by the National Paying Agency to expand the infrastructure for charging electric vehicles and boats in the village of Drukiai.

Kostas Mikalajunas was initially the company's shareholder but he later sold his shares to Virginija Paluckiene, the wife of the prime minister's brother Danas. Paluckiene is the director of the Palanga Resort Museum.

In February, Dankora launched a tender to purchase battery systems with two inverters.

The only company that won the tender was Garnis, in which Paluckas has a 49 percent stake.

BNS reported earlier that Garnis, a company founded last year and co-owned by the prime minister and his business partner Mindaugas Milasauskas (51 percent), is also mentioned in a previously published journalistic investigation where the Siena center for journalistic investigation, and Laisves TV, founded by Tapinas, revealed that Garnis had received a 200,000 euros soft loan from the national development bank ILTE when Paluckas was already prime minister.

Paluckas and Milasauskas also co-own Emus, another company that has been operating in a similar field for a longer period of time, and questions have been raised as to whether the funds from the loan Garnis received have been illegally used to the benefit of Emus, which was not able to obtain a soft loan from ILTE due to the duration of its operation.

Following the Laisves TV and Siena investigation, the Financial Crime Investigation Service is looking into the Garnis case, and the Chief Official Ethics Commission is carrying its separate investigation whether Paluckas should have recused himself when the government made decision regarding ILTE.

The Special Investigation Service is carrying out a separate probe into loans, real estate purchases and ties to businessman Darijus Vilcinskas in response to another investigative report that raised questions about Sagerta, a company Paluckas partly owned a decade ago and funded by Uni Trading, a company represented by Vilcinskas.