Around 40 million euros may have gone missing from BaltCap Infrastructure Fund (BInF) when it was headed by Šarūnas Stepukonis, its former partner suspected of embezzlement, Darius Raulušaitis, the company’s lawyer, said on Tuesday.
According to Raulušaitis, the amount embezzled by Stepukonis would have been lower if a pre-trial investigation into a suspicious financial transaction involving the man had not been dropped in 2022.
“If the investigation had not been terminated in 2022 and Šarūnas Stepukonis had been stopped, we would probably not be talking about 40 million euros in embezzled funds today; maybe the amount would be lower,” he told LRT RADIO on Tuesday.
Simonas Gustainis, a managing partner at BaltCap, previously told BNS that the amount stolen and possibly gambled away by Stepukonis could exceed 30 million euros.
Law enforcement bodies suspect Stepukonis of having embezzled more than 27 million euros in BInF funds. He is believed to have gambled away at least part of the embezzled money at a casino.
Raulušaitis declined to comment on the possibility of BaltCap returning money to the fund’s companies. However, he believes that there is still hope of recovering the money.
“It’s important that the prosecutors [...] succeed in finding at least some of the funds embezzled from the companies and return them to the companies,” the lawyer said.
Stepukonis was detained in Lithuanian on Saturday, and the Vilnius City District Court on Monday allowed to arrest him for two weeks.
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