The article in BNN-NEWS.COM reports as follows (see also the latvian version):

Prosecutor General’s Office too weak for Lembergs

and further on states that:

The accused Latvian politician Aivars Lembergs seems to be gradually recovering his control over the Latvian oil business. His moves remain unnoticed and are partly approved by inactions of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

Ventspils millionaires Olafs Berkis, Olegs Stepanovs, Igors Skoks and Genadijs Sevcovs have been elected into the AS Ventspils nafta Supervisory Council. They are all believed to have in mind one and the same thought of selling the Latvian oil business. They intend to do it bypassing the state as the potential owner of the seized Lembergs’ shares.

Besides, the persons have carried out a variety of schemes that have brought the state and the company huge losses. Now there is a possibility that national oil business will simply be sold and the money will travel straight into the pockets of Lembergs and Berkis. But the Prosecutor General’s Office seems not to to be concerned.

The enthusiasm from 2007 about the fight against corruption has practically faded and politicians no longer fear possible punishment that much. Lembergs recently gained access to oil companies’ money in cooperation with Berkis, Skoks, Sevcovs and Stepanovs, who had falsified documents and held a number of fake shareholder meetings. This makes it easier to keep bribing politicians and officials who are never tortured by their conscience.

To read the full article (which we recommend) please go to bnn-news.com for the english version – or to bnn.lv for the latvian version.

RIGA, LATVIA: Latvijas Naftas Tranzits (“LNT”), the second largest (at least 39%) VN shareholder, is dissatisfied with the way the Management appointed by Vitol manipulated the Shareholders’ Meeting. Yesterday, July 27, 2011 the VN Shareholders’ Meeting re-elected the entire Supervisory Board without any prior announcement. The Vitol management intentionally hid the fact that they planned a re-election of the Supervisory Board. No single word was passed to LNT. LNT considers that it was a dirty trick from the VN Management not to announce the planned election of the Supervisory Board.

After the start of the Shareholders’ Meeting, the re-election of the Supervisory Board was initiated. LNT found itself in a situation where it had to provide, within minutes, consent forms for its proposed candidates for the position as VN Supervisory Board Members in order not to be excluded from the Supervisory Board. In this short time, LNT was not in a position to provide consent forms from its certain preferred candidates outside Latvia. Solely for this reason, David Schlaff and Michael Hason could not be re-elected. LNT will request a new Shareholders’ Meeting be convoked as soon as possible to correct this. Dr. Rudolf Meroni, Chairman of the LNT Supervisory Board stated: “It is unbelievable, how quickly the English guys have adopted the same doubtful methods they learned from the prior VN management. Such methods are disgraceful and unbecoming of English businessmen!”.

When asked, Dr. Meroni further stated: “The transaction with Mr. Martin Schlaff absolutely continues. Right now it is actually at a very interesting stage. The transaction with Mr. Schlaff is the only existing chance to bring peace to the Ventspils Oil Transit Business. This would be by far the best outcome for the Latvian Economy, if VN, LNT and Ventbunkers had only one owner. As I have stated earlier, such transactions take a considerable time. In our case, this is even more true, because of the complicated shareholder structure of these companies.”

END

Press release July 28th, 2011 Latvijas Naftas Tranzits

This release about VITOL has also been seen on BNN.