Procurement records for a luxury Volvo XC90 linked to Raudondvario Manor appeared in Lithuania’s Central Public Procurement Portal after journalists reported that neither they nor Public Procurement Office experts had been able to locate them. The office has now opened an assessment of the purchase. The publication of the records does not itself establish that procurement rules were broken.
Records appeared after the report
15min said its analysis of Raudondvario Manor’s public purchases could not locate documents for a Volvo XC90 registered in February. The vehicle was reported to have a monthly payment of about €710, and the institution’s acting head, Ugnė Žemgulienė, said the former director had driven it. When asked for the acquisition records, the acting head did not provide them and did not respond to calls, according to the report. After 15min published its account, the documents were uploaded to the Central Public Procurement Portal on 12 October. They included a financial lease agreement and a commercial offer. The sequence has prompted scrutiny, but the source does not report a finding that the purchase was unlawful.
The purchase used financial leasing
The documents describe a €68.5k financial lease agreement signed on 29 January with Luminor Lizingas. The vehicle was to be bought from Sostena, while the purchaser undertook to pay a €30k initial contribution. The agreement names former Raudondvario Manor director Snieguolė Navickienė, who is also mentioned in Sostena’s vehicle offer. That offer gives the vehicle a value of €76.1k before a special price of €68.5k. Financial leasing is a procurement mechanism in which the buyer obtains use of an asset while making agreed payments through a leasing provider, with the supplier and financing arrangement recorded in the transaction documents. Here, the published records show both parts of that arrangement.
Watchdog will assess whether rules were followed
Viktorija Namavičienė, deputy director of Lithuania’s Public Procurement Office, told 15min that the office had decided to assess the manor’s vehicle purchase. She said the aim was to establish whether all requirements set by legislation had been followed and that the conclusions would be made public. The assessment matters because publication in the central portal is part of procurement transparency: it gives suppliers, journalists and the public access to the records needed to examine how a purchase was arranged. It does not, on its own, resolve whether the procedure was compliant. The source records the missing documents, their later publication and the planned review, but contains no completed finding of wrongdoing.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Asset | Volvo XC90 |
| Agreement value | €68.5k |
| Vehicle value in offer | €76.1k |
| Initial contribution | €30k |
| Monthly payment | About €710 |
| Agreement date | 29 January |
| Documents uploaded | 12 October |
| Leasing provider | Luminor Lizingas |
The documents appeared in the Central Public Procurement Portal after 15min reported that they could not be found.
WHY IT MATTERS
A public buyer’s procurement record is central to transparency. When documents cannot initially be located, later publication can clarify the transaction, but only a formal review can determine whether the applicable legal requirements were met.
Reported from 15min.lt, 2026-10-13. The Tender Wire is published by Otnox.
