According to him, the „stain“ on the competition in the public sphere is not entirely fair, as it is not directly related to him.
„Now we are saying that there is some kind of stain, but it was not related to the competition,“ Matulionis told Žinių Radijas on Tuesday.
„First of all, we need to find out what is behind this. The Ministry of National Defence provided a detailed explanation of this situation. We need to take a calm look and assess it,“ said the president's advisor on national security issues.
He reiterated what Minister of National Defence Robertas Kaunas had said earlier – Fegda and its subsidiary Rudina, which took first place in the Rūdninkai competition, did not need a VSD reliability certificate. According to Matulionis, the most crucial thing was compliance with national security requirements.
„In fact, the certificate of reliability itself was not required in the Rūdninkai tender. There was an assessment of compliance with national security requirements, and all companies were recognised as compliant – both by the SSD, the Second Operational Services Department (AOTD), and the Prosecutor General's Office,“ assured the representative of the President's Office.
However, according to the LRT Investigation Department, the company later received a lower reliability certificate. Last December, the SSD did not issue the company a permit to work with information marked „strictly confidential.“ Still, in March of this year, the institution issued Fegda a certificate allowing it to work with restricted information.
The Delfi portal was the first to report that among the tender winners was Rudina, a company owned by Fegda, which had previously built a defective road to the landfill site. In the first part of the tender, it took first place in the final ranking of bids. The company's submitted project is worth EUR 348.35 million.
The portal later also announced that the Ministry of National Defence had selected the tender's potential winner without taking into account the State Security Department's report on the company's reliability, which stated that the company was concealing certain information in accordance with the Law on State and Service Secrets.
According to Delfi, Rudina is owned by Conres LT and Fegda. The latter is often associated with Mindaugas Sinkevičius, Chairman of the Social Democratic Party.
The politician previously worked for the company, and his father, MP Rimantas Sinkevičius, is a member of a hunting club with company shareholder Arvydas Gribulis and Gediminas Gribulis, director of the Fegda Group, which owns the company.
ELTA recalls that defects were noticed on the road leading to the Rūdninkai training ground immediately after its construction in 2023, but the Ministry of National Defence, which coordinates the military project, is not requiring Fegda to rebuild the road; it is currently only being repaired.
Fegda, which won the public procurement contract to build the reinforced concrete road to the training ground, carried out the work for EUR 6.45 million.