According to the claim lodged with the Kaunas Regional Court, the Feb6ruary additional agreement between Ūkio Bankas, Newfield Investors and Russia-registered Russkiy Karavay, which provided for the transfer of shares, had been allegedly forged, Ūkio Bankas said in a press release.
Ūkio Bankas acquired 18 percent of shares in UBIG on Mar. 30, 2010, under the securities repurchase agreement signed with Newfield Investors. On January 31, 2013, the bank, Newfield Investors and Russkiy Karavay signed a trilateral agreement setting forth the conditions, under which the shares owned by the bank would be transferred to the British Virgin Islands-registered company.
Ūkio Bankas claims that Newfield Investors has not fulfilled the conditions defining the repayment of loans to Ūkio Bankas hence the bank has remained the owner of UBIG’s shares concerned.
With UBIG bankruptcy proceedings opened, Rita Matuziene, UBIG CEO, provided an additional agreement appended to the trilateral agreement to the Kaunas Regional Court. That additional agreement stipulated that Newfield Investors was not obliged to fulfill the conditions established in the main agreement and the parties agreed that the ownership of the bank’s shares in UBIG should be transferred to the British Virgin Islands-registered company.
“That agreement defies any elementary economic logic. Therefore, we decided to examine the origin of this document. We found out that the bank had never concluded this agreement. The bank’s representative Romualdas Svitojus, whose signature appeared on the agreement, confirmed that he had never signed such a document and the signature had been forged,” the press release quoted Gintaras Adomonis, Ūkio Bankas’ bankruptcy administrator, as saying.
Doubts about the origin of the document were augmented by the absence of any records of the bank’s decisions to sign such an agreement or its approval by the bank’s management board or the supervisory council.
