The court refused to apply interim safeguard measures asked for by Triniti, the court’s spokesman, Gintautas Stalnionis, told BNS.
VAE plans to buy up to 8,500 hours of services, which will be provided over two years, through a simplified restricted procedure. The value of the contract should not exceed 3.4 million litas (excluding VAT), according to the announcement published in the Central Public Procurement Portal.
The bidders had to submit their bids by 7 August. However, the portal has not published the names of the bidders as yet.
The Lithuanian Public Procurement Office (PPO) said last Thursday that VAE, the state-owned company that is doing preparatory work for the Visaginas nuclear facility project, should cancel unlawfully awarded contracts, worth around 30 million litas in total, with foreign lawyers and a local public relations agency.
In particular, VAE will have to cancel a 20.7-million-litas contract with the international law firm Herbert Smith, an 8-million-litas contract with the British investment bank N M Rothschild & Sons Limited, and a 1.2-million-litas contract with the public relations agency BVRG, the office said.
VAE stated immediately afterwards that all procurements were legal and the company would decide whether to terminate the contracts after studying the official conclusions once they were sent by PPO. The office will wait for the company’s response until the end of November.
Triniti claims that it has more than 40 professional lawyers and is active in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. It was created through the merger of Estonia’s Tamme Otsmann Ruus Vabamets, Latvia’s Treilons & Petrovics, and Lithuania’s SSJ LLP.
