RIGA - Representatives of Latvia's ruling coalition party New Era on the Latvian
Privatization Agency's council together with the Economy Minister Juris
Lujans have suggested the temporary dismissal of the agency's board for
non-economic actions.
The council also recommended the establishment of a special commission to
assess the work of the privatization agency.
The agency's board has expressed concern over the decision, which it has
called unsuitable and legally ungrounded. The rest of the council members
were also unhappy with the decision, as they considered the arguments voiced
by New Era Party representatives as unconvincing and that the issue should
be looked into in more detail, rather than in a hurry as was done.
A final decision will be made at the privatization agency's shareholders
meeting with Lujans. The minister did not yet say when he would call the
meeting and what his decision would be. He explained that the possible
dismissal of the privatization board would in no way postpone the
privatization process. "I will see to it that this will in no way influence
privatization," Lujans said.
The chairman of the privatization agency board and chief executive officer
Arnis Ozolnieks responded with watchfulness to the council decision.
"We will still think about how to react if ungrounded dismissal is carried
out," he said.
"I am personally convinced of my justice and victory in any instance. Here I
may say as Churchill did -- we may lose the battle, but we will not lose the
war," Ozolnieks added.
The agency's deputy board chairman Viktors Sadinovs said that he believed
the council's legal arguments did not withstand any criticism.
The Latvian Privatization Agency's board has been accused of allotting
exceptionally low prices for expensive land plots and real-estate objects.
The board retaliated against these accusations by claiming that the prices
were set according to regulations approved by the council itself.
A number of high-ranking state officials have had to resign or been sacked
since Prime Minister Einars Repse, founder of the New Era Party, took office
in fall last year, elected to parliament on a battling anticorruption
platform.
