Agriculture, Banks, Financial Services, Lithuania, Loan, Markets and Companies, Russia

Alfa-Bank provided several loans to Arvi NPK, a Russian company indirectly controlled by Kucinskas, and last April demanded early repayment of the debt, interest and penalties, according to the Lithuanian Court of Appeals, which heard the bank's lawsuit.

The bank asked the court to declare null and void an agreement, signed in November 2015, under which Kucinskas transferred the ownership of a stake in Vyrja, a holding company that owns, among other companies, Arvi ir Ko, to his son Justas as a gift.

The Appeals Court on Thursday turned down Kucinskas' appeal and upheld the Kaunas Regional Court's decision of last September to place a freeze on the shares in Vyrja as an interim measure.

According to information from the court, starting in 2012, Alfa-Bank and Arvi NPK concluded four agreements under which the latter company received loans, worth 10.3 mln euros in total, in various currencies. Kucinskas guaranteed the repayment of the loans.

With Arvi NPK being late to make payments, the Russian bank last April demanded that it pay back the debt, interest and penalties within five days. After the Russian company failed to do so, Alfa-Bank demanded that Kucinskas repay it 514.2 mln rubles (EUR 7.99 mln) and 6.441 mln euros.