Garsų Pasaulis, one of the largest printing companies in Lithuania, has been labeled unreliable by the State Security Department (VSD). Following this declaration, the Identity Documents Personalisation Centre has ended its contract for passport production with the company, as stated by the Interior Ministry on Wednesday.
Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė requested the VSD to reevaluate Garsų Pasaulis’ reliability after an investigative report by 15min.lt raised concerns about potential connections between the company’s representatives and the Belarusian regime.
With the contract terminated, the ministry plans to start a new international procurement process for identity document forms, aiming to include bids from various EU service providers. Historically, Garsų Pasaulis has often been the only bidder for these contracts.
The Interior Ministry noted that the current stock of forms produced by Garsų Pasaulis will be adequate to sustain passport production until the end of the year, when the new procurement process is anticipated to conclude.
Ana Janauskienė, CEO of Garsų Pasaulis, told BNS that the company intends to pursue legal action. “We believe the VSD’s decision is unfounded. We’re consulting with lawyers to resolve this situation as quickly as possible,” she stated. “We’re definitely planning to go to court.”
A journalistic investigation by 15min.lt and the Belarusian Investigation Center (BIC) revealed that Garsų Pasaulis has ties to Viktor Shevtsov, associated with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. The investigation found that in 2011, Garsų Pasaulis’ parent company formed a joint venture in Lithuania, called GP Holographics, with Shevtsov and Belarus’ hologram monopoly, Golograficheskaya Industriya. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Garsų Pasaulis sold its shares in GP Holographics to Shevtsov through an intermediary in the summer of 2022.
This year, the EU imposed sanctions on Shevtsov, confirming that his hologram production business is benefiting from the Lukashenko regime.
Furthermore, the investigation indicated that Garsų Pasaulis and GP Holographics operate from the same location in Vilnius, share contact details, and have the same administrator and accountant.
Since 2014, Garsų Pasaulis has secured all three passport production contracts awarded by the Identity Documents Personalisation Centre, with the 2022 contract valued at over 30 million euros.
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