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International Internet Magazine. Baltic States news & analytics Friday, 29.03.2024, 13:31

Lithuanian court rejects LGC Cargo complaint over non-allocated capacity for 2019-2020

BC, Vilnius, 30.11.2020.Print version
A Lithuanian court has rejected a complaint by LGC Cargo, a Lithuanian railway services company that is indirectly linked to former Latvian political heavyweights and Russian Railways (RZD) via its Latvian majority shareholder Baltic Transit Service, over the non-allocation of railway capacity for 2019-2020, informs LETA/BNS.

On Monday, Vilnius Regional Administrative Court rejected LGC Cargo's complaint over the failure of the Lithuanian Transport Safety Administration (LTSA) to allocate the requested capacity, Audris Kutrevicius, a spokesman for the court, told BNS.


The court ruled that LGC Cargo could use the requested lines to carry freight from the Lithuanian-Latvian border or the Lithuanian-Belarusian border to the Russian region Kaliningrad, and this way be engaged in transit.


"Therefore, the Administration (LTSA – BNS) had the right and duty to ask the claimant (LGC Cargo – BNS) to prove (…) that it will not be engaged in transit," Kutrevicius said.


LGC Cargo had applied for authorization to transport freight across Lithuania's entire railway network and all of its border crossings with Belarus, Latvia and Russia's Kaliningrad region.


The company's representatives did not deny earlier that freight would go from Russia or Kazakhstan via Latvia, Lithuania and Kaliningrad to Poland, but insists that it would not be transit.


Under Lithuanian legislation, freight and passenger can only be transported in transit between third countries via Lithuania by the state railway company Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways, LG).


Last year, LGC Cargo filed a complaint against Lithuania with the European Commission. The company, whose shareholders and executives include Stasys Dalydka, the former CEO of LG and his the then deputy Stasys Gudvalis, says it wants to carry freight from the Lithuanian-Latvian border to the Kaliningrad border.


But Lithuania's Transport Ministry see threats to national security in LGC Cargo's intentions.


Ainars Slesers, Latvia's former transport minister and now chairman of LGC Cargo's supervisory board, said in Vilnius last spring that the company wanted to engage in freight transportation in Lithuania but had artificial obstacles put in its way.






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