100-million-euros support

On 15th of April Lithuanian TV news stunned the nation - Ukraine's Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko claims that hundreds of million Litas have been laundered through Lithuanian banks and used to fund the election campaign of the pro-russian candidate Viktor Yanukovich in 2004 presidential election.

The ministry insists that around 350 million Litas (more than 100 million Euros)were transferred to Lithuanian bank by a company, named "Semereka", and cashed by a natural person. Supposedly the money were cashed in small amounts not to cause suspicion.

Lithuanian officials argue that not to notice an operation of such magnitude is impossible. Head of the Lithuanian Bank Reinoldijus Sarkinas told LNK that Lithuania has a strict bank control system and money laundering is extremely complicated. Commercial banks are obliged to report to the Financial Crime Investigation Service about any transaction greater than 50 000 Litas. Lately no signals about suspicious transactions were received from Lithuanian banks. According to the General Prosecution Office (BTV news, 15Apr.2005),if a bank failed to report as obliged, it would lose the license to operate in Lithuania and the workers would face criminal charges. In addition, R.Sarkinas told BTV that at the time no bank in Lithuania would have such an amount of cash (3,5 million Litas).

There are different speculations why Ukraine would come up with such accusations. TV3 claim (news, 15Apr.2005) that unofficially this is construed as provocation before the two-day informal NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Vilnius on 20th of April. According to BTV, the spokesperson of the Financial Crime Investigation Service Ruta Andriuskaite says that they don't yet deny the possibility that Ukraine's Internal Affairs Minister might have confused the names of the countries and said Lithuania instead of for example Latvia. Meanwhile Lithuania has sent a note to Ukraine demanding more detailed information about the claims of their Ministry of Internal Affairs.