Lithuanian prosecutors have reopened an investigation, closed in 2022, into a suspicious Paysera financial transaction involving Šarūnas Stepukonis, a former BaltCap Infrastructure Fund partner suspected of embezzling millions of euros in another probe launched in 2023.
“The pre-trial investigation has been reopened by the decision [...] adopted yesterday,” Justas Laucius, chief prosecutor at the Vilnius Regional Prosecutor’s Office, told reporters on Friday.
The investigation is based on the Criminal Code’s article on “laundering of property as proceeds from crime”, he said.
According to Laucius, the Financial Crime Investigation Service (FNTT) in 2022 investigated a suspicious financial transaction in which 3.9 million euros were transferred to Stepukonis’ account at Paysera, an electronic money institution.
Stepukonis was questioned as a special witness in the probe. He testified and provided documents that the money in his account had been transferred from a Polish company as part of a share transfer transaction, according to the prosecutor.
After assessing the data and concluding that the transfer was legitimate, it was decided to discontinue the pre-trial investigation, the prosecutor said.
However, the probe was reopened after it was found that “the financial transactions under investigation in both pre-trial investigations involve the same companies and the same bank accounts, and that the periods of some of the money transfers investigated in both cases coincide”, the Prosecutor General’s Office said in a press release on Friday.
How much money was gabled away?
Lithuanian law-enforcement officials on Friday refused to disclose the total amount of money gambled away by Stepukonis.
Rolandas Kiškis, director of the Financial Crime Investigation Service (FNTT), promised to answer the question later.
“We will certainly answer, but not at this stage,” he told a press conference.
This is not secret information, but it takes time to summarise all the collected data before it can be made public, according to Kiškis.
“When we have the real, aggregated information and all the answers from partners and interested parties, believe me, we’ll give you that information, there’s nothing to hide here,” he said.
Kiškis did not specify whether officers know Stepukonis' whereabouts. An international search has been launched for him.
“We won't comment. Not because we are avoiding these things, but it would simply be unprofessional,” he said. “Commenting on what we are not sure of is unprofessional, untimely and will certainly undermine the success of the investigation.”
He also refrained from commenting on when Stepukonis left Lithuania.
In the investigations controlled by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, Stepukonis is suspected of misappropriating at least 27 million euros.
Simonas Gustainis, a managing partner at BaltCap, says that the amount of claims against the former fund manager will exceed 30 million euros, adding that the money could have been spent not only on gambling.
Casino should have interfered
Virginijus Daukšys, head of Lithuania’s Gaming Control Authority, says the watchdog is currently checking whether Olympic Casino Group Baltija complied with all the requirements when Stepukonis suspectedly gambled away 27 million euros at its casinos.
Daukšys acknowledges that Stepukonis’ gambling was “potentially problematic” and that Olympic Casino should have stopped it.
The gambling watchdog issued guidelines for 2021 and 2023 to be followed by gambling operators in cases of problem gambling, he said.
“Unfortunately, they are only recommendations. They define a lot of mechanisms on what a gambling operator should do. If [Stepukonis] was betting so big amounts, they should have come into contact with the gambler and prevented the gambling,” Daukšys said. “Olympic’s CEO has said that they followed all the rules, so we will look into that too.”
For his part, Kiškis, head of the Financial Crime Investigation Service, says his service has not received a single report of suspicious transactions from Olympic Casino, and, in general, the service has received between three and five such reports from gambling companies over the last three years.
He did not say how much money Stepukonis may have gambled away, nor did he comment on whether there might have been other ways the money was embezzled.
“Hypothetically, we can come up with a lot of versions here and we are checking them, I will certainly not speculate,” Kiškis said.
According to the FNTT, if a gambling organiser fails to comply with the anti-money laundering requirements, it faces a fine of up to 1.1 million euros.
Asked whether the authorities are looking into the possibility that the gambling company was not only a service provider but also participated in a money laundering scheme, Kiškis said that “this possibility is also being assessed”.
Commenting on Olympic Casino’s role in the story, he said that Stepukonis is the only suspect in this case so far.
