At the end of last year we wrote about how senior LVM employees who had been directly involved in decision-making on the organization of procurements and the drafting of procurement rules at the state-owned company “Latvijas valsts meži” went to work for one of the sector’s entrepreneurs, including one on whose matters they had decided while at the state-owned company. However, this is not the only situation that shows how some entrepreneurs have become intertwined with ministries and state-owned companies, creating an opportunity for enterprising people to receive money from both sides – both from the state side and from a private company.
This time it concerns the Ministry of Agriculture’s programme “Provision of individual (one-off) consultation services within the framework of interventions of the Latvian Common Agricultural Policy Strategic Plan”.
The programme, which is part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Strategic Plan for 2023–2027, provides free consultations to forest owners on management, risk prevention, and digital technologies. The total funding is approximately 1.4 million euros for three years.
This is a well-intentioned programme whose main idea is to provide forest owners with independent advice so that forest owners do not have to blindly trust the assessments and recommendations of various forestry companies, and so that the forest owner can competently assess them, evaluating both the prices and services offered, as well as the proposed management strategies. If a Latvian logging company were able to ensure that these ministry-contracted, supposedly independent experts were favourable to a particular company, this would provide the company with both new clients and opportunities to sell its services at exactly the price the company wants. Meanwhile, a negative background and assessment could be created for other companies.
Exactly such a situation is suspected in the aforementioned programme, because one of the main consultants, Ainārs Tiļļa, simultaneously works both as an “independent” consultant in the programme organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and as a real estate procurement specialist at SIA “Stiga RM”.
In the list of consultants published by the Ministry of Agriculture, only three specialists are mentioned, who work through the Forestry Services Cooperative Society “Mūsu mežs”, and Ainārs Tiļļa is involved in almost all areas of consultation – from forest management to digital technologies.
Such a situation is clearly a conflict of interest and should not be permissible. Further shadow is cast on this situation by the previously mentioned fact that the owner of Stiga RM, Andris Ramoliņš, does not hide his close relations with the Ministry of Agriculture’s State Secretary Ģirts Krūmiņš, whose remit includes both Latvijas valsts meži and the consultation programmes, and everywhere suspicions arise about conflicts of interest and possible corruption directly related to Krūmiņš’s good acquaintance – the owner of Stiga RM.
Source of document: Ministry of Agriculture:
Originally published at https://inc-baltics.com/stiga-rm-darbinieks-vienlaicigi-ari-neatkarigs-konsultants-zemkopibas-ministrijas-mezsaimniecibas-konsultaciju-programma/
Like
Love
Happy
Haha
Sad
