The conclusions of the Public Procurement Service (hereinafter referred to as the Public Procurement Service) published today only confirmed the repeated statements of the Opposition of the Vilnius Council that such indexation of the multifunctional center is not possible from either an economic or legal point of view. This is understandable to every honest and business-minded manager. The city of Vilnius has neither a city mayor nor a governing majority, which consists of conservatives and the Freedom Party, which would represent the people of Vilnius. VPN findings clearly show that the mayor V. Benkunskas and the ruling majority serves only Whitecap and the interests of Šarūnas Stepukonis, as well as throwing Vilnius people's money for worthless and expensive consultations. Let's hope that law enforcement institutions will be principled and will take measures that will evaluate the actions of Mayor V. Benkunk and the ruling majority of the council.
After this VPN decision, we demand to convene a meeting of the Vilnius City Council as soon as possible, in which the council's decision "Regarding the 2021 October 8 concession agreement no. 29-602/21 "On the implementation of the project "Multifunctional complex for the promotion of health, education, education, culture and employment"" regarding illegal indexing.
At the same time, the mayor, as the head of the working group, must record fundamental violations of the contract between the foundation Baltcap and UAB "Vilnius multifunctional complex" and terminate the existing contract and demand compensation for the damages provided for in the contract.
Vilnius city municipality can take over the company "Vilnius Multifunctional Complex", which owns the stadium project and issued building permits, and announce separate public tenders for a specific object of the Multifunctional Complex. Objects must be built at a fair price. This would ensure competition, obtain a real market price for construction and build the stadium quickly. By building the object in parts, the municipality could simplify the project and distribute the risks to individual construction contractors, thereby ensuring real guarantees of building the objects on time. It is important that the municipality could solve the issue of the operation of future objects through a direct transaction or a separate tender, this would undoubtedly facilitate the construction itself, because the market participants clearly communicated that only the construction process itself can be economically profitable, but not its operation after the construction is completed.
At the same time, the Vilnius Council should demand responsibility from the consultants, who by their actions did not represent the interests of the city, but only helped shape the political will, which, as the VPT conclusion showed, is illegal and harmful to Vilnius. It is implausible that the consultants submitted a conclusion to authorize the council to make changes to the Concession Agreement that go beyond the boundaries and scope of the original Concession Agreement. It was allowed not according to the contract, but on theoretical general grounds and ignoring the Law on Concessions, to carry out double indexation (not provided for in the contract), as well as to illegally change the number of objects under construction, to rewrite the settlement schedule without even hiding that these changes benefit the concessionaire. However, the essence of concessions is that the concession agreement cannot be fundamentally changed, and when such changes are made, a new concession must be organized. It is good that the VPN has withstood the incredible amount of political pressure and protected our rule of law, restored confidence in concession procedures and really saved taxpayers' money. We are also happy that our arguments are reflected in the VPN's conclusions, because it was on these grounds that we appealed to the VPN and other institutions.
ARTUR ZUOKAS
