Power group missing in action

RIGA - The apparently Swiss-based company A.G. Group, which is said to be interested in building a 500 megawatt gas-fired power station in Latvia, is not listed in Switzerland’s Business and Enterprise Register, according to the Aug. 3 edition of Latvian daily Neatkariga, reports Nozare.lv. The newspaper indicates that no company exists in the Swiss register with a name even resembling A.G. Group.

It has likewise been impossible to identify 21-year-old Alex Goldman, who previously claimed to be the company’s board chairman. Among Swiss company officials, it was possible only to find one Alexander Goldmann; however, he is not the chairman of an energy firm but of the publisher Condor Verlag, writes the newspaper.

According to the newspaper, this is not the first occasion that major plans have been announced in Latvia by a dubious company or persons. In 2007, Time Investments announced its intention to take part in the privatization of telecoms giant Lattelecom; following its rejection, it lodged court appeals all the way up to the Senate of the Supreme Court, where it lost. The 90 percent owner of Time Investments was the Rotterdam post-box company Eurobryan B.V., which had no employees, despite its promises to invest hundreds of millions in Lattelecom shares, writes Neatkariga.

The story on the A.G. Group was originally reported in the business daily Dienas Bizness, stating that the company was interested in building a new 500 megawatt gas-fired power station in Latvia using private investments. The story was carried in The Baltic Times last week.