The commission that will evaluate potential misuse of public funds in the Port Development Fund includes Ministry of Transport officials Liene Priedīte-Kancēviča and Ingūna Strautmane, both of whom previously received payments from the same fund, according to a report by TV3’s investigative programme “Nekā personīga”.
The Ministry of Transport explains that it lacks enough staff to assign to such commissions.
For four years, Liene Priedīte-Kancēviča, as Director of the Ministry’s Legal Department, received compensation from the Port Development Fund. Ingūna Strautmane also received payments during a brief period when she led the department. Now both have been appointed to the commission that will assess findings made by the State Audit Office. The Ministry sees no conflict of interest.
When asked by “Nekā personīga” whether this raises concerns about the commission’s impartiality, State Secretary of the Ministry of Transport, Andulis Židkovs, responded that the ministry’s capacity is limited. “We simply don’t have that many employees with the necessary competence to assign to such commissions. I don’t think it will affect anything. It happened occasionally and on a small scale,” Židkovs told the programme.
The Port Development Fund was established more than 20 years ago to promote Latvia’s ports in international markets and attract investors and cargo.
However, most of the fund’s financing went to an average of 16 Ministry of Transport employees through annual service contracts. The payments were processed by the ministry’s capital company, Latvian Maritime Administration. The allocation of funds appears questionable: for example, last year only 38 972 euros was spent on actual promotional activities, while salaries (including taxes) for fund staff totalled nearly four times that amount—147 866.
At last week’s Latvian Port Council meeting, Prime Minister Evika Siliņa proposed dissolving the fund. However, the idea did not receive sufficient support—at least for now