Advanced Search

Abstract:
 
According to a 19 February 2002 Interfax report, Vytautas Jurna, chairman of the board of the Turto Bankas in Lithuania, announced that a Vilnius district court had confirmed that the Russian firm AMI is the legal owner of over four metric tons of beryllium stored in the Turto Bankas. The Turto Bankas official neither denied nor confirmed reports  that the Lithuanian government had already approved the export of the beryllium from Lithuania.

The Interfax report says that AMI, based in Yekaterinburg, reportedly brought the beryllium to Lithuania in 1993 as transit cargo for sale to a Mexican buyer. However, the report adds that no official information about the identity of the potential purchaser has been made public. [Reports from the mid-1990s about this incident named North Korea as final destination of the beryllium. For earlier reports about the beryllium seized in 1993 in Lithuania, see abstracts 19930540, 19951960, 19970290, 19970271, and 19980190.] Interfax reports that about 140 kg of the beryllium, which was contaminated with radiation, has remained at the Lithuanian Institute of Physics since 1993, when it was brought there for examination.

Turto Bankas maintains that AMI owes the bank one million euro ($870,900 as of 19 February 2002) for storing the beryllium and said AMI intends to pay with cash rather than part of the beryllium, as earlier reports had suggested.