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Top Latvian telecoms executives charged with fraud
Criminal fraud charges have been brought against Juris Gulbis, the chief executive of Tet, the Latvian telecommunications and entertainment company jointly owned by Sweden’s Telia Company and the Latvian state, and other current and former Tet executives, the Latvian State Prosecutor confirmed.
The charges against Gulbis, Tet director of legal and corporate affairs Toms Meisītis, Jānis Ligers, a former executive of the company, and Gintars Kavacs, the owner and executive of a digital video broadcast equipment company, date back to transactions more than 10 years ago, when Tet was called Lattelecom.
Gulbis and the other Lattelecom executives allegedly made deals to facilitate a fast launch of digital terrestrial broadcasting in the Latvian capital Riga by buying equipment from a company run by Kavacs, who in turn had bought it from an earlier digital TV project that ended in scandal and criminal charges against around 20 persons.
The agreements that Lattelecom, now Tet, made with Hannu Digital, the company run by Kavacs at the time, allegedly made inflated payments to the company and caused some EUR 7.5 million in losses to Tet, according to local media. A spokesperson for Latvia’s State Auditor said irregularities had been detected in this arrangement in 2010, but the amount of losses inflicted on Lattelecom/Tet was still confidential.
