Last week, media reported that the Lithuanian prosecutors have opened a pre-trial investigation into the Lithuanian crowdfunding platform Contribee. It has now emerged that one of its shareholders took a large sum of money from an NGO account on Contribee for his personal use.
Adrijus Jakučionis, head of Contribee and one of the platform’s shareholders and co-founders, told BNS that a pre-trial investigation has been opened in relation to one of the platform’s former executives, who allegedly arbitrarily concluded a loan agreement with Contribee for his personal needs.
It appears that more than 130,000 euros may have been transferred by Gediminas Ratkevičius, one of Contribee’s shareholders, from the account of Blue/Yellow, a prominent NGO supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
This was announced by blogger Skirmantas Malinauskas on Monday.
“The Contribee house of cards started to fall apart due to a particularly scandalous incident. Gediminas Ratkevičius, the former head of the company and still one of its major shareholders with a huge influence on the company, ‘borrowed’ funds not just from the company. The money was transferred from a Blue/Yellow account,” he wrote on Facebook.
According to Malinauskas, Ratkevičius took the money by first changing the login details of the NGO founder Jonas Ohman in order to prevent him from quickly noticing the missing funds.
“The calculation was simple – Jonas logs in quite rarely, so it will be possible to win time. And most importantly, when a scandalous event comes to light, nobody will want to talk about it, because it would not only be the final nail in the coffin of the Contribee’s reputation but it could also affect a large organisation that is honestly working to collect donations for Ukraine,” the blogger wrote.
“Surprisingly, it has worked brilliantly. Neither Blue/Yellow nor Contribee have publicly reported it for fear of reputational risks. However, data of the pre-trial investigation shows that one of Contribee’s representatives has contacted law enforcement,” Malinauskas added.
Karolis Žukauskas, a spokesperson for Blue/Yellow, confirmed to LRT.lt that at one point, the organisation was missing part of the money it had accumulated on its Contribee account.
“At the beginning of this year, we encountered some problems when logging into our Contribee account. Then it turned out that part of the donations collected there were missing. We wrote to Contribee formally to ask them to explain what had happened and to return the funds we had raised,” Žukauskas said.
“Contribee explained that they had internal problems and were dealing with the matter with the help of law enforcement. They had returned all the funds, and we had no further complaints against them,” he added.
Žukauskas noted that Blue/Yellow is still using Contribee as one of the platforms to collect donations but the funds are now automatically being transferred to the NGO’s bank account every day.
Some organisations, including a journalistic project Redakacija, have already left Contribee after the news of Ratkevičius’ actions broke out.
The Contribee’s report submitted to the Centre of Registers shows that the company had a net loss of 51,200 euros in 2021, compared to a net loss of only 47 euros in 2020, when it started operations.
The company has not yet submitted its financial reports for 2022 and 2023 to the Centre of Registers.
As of January 30, Jakučionis owned 31.52 percent of Contribee shares, 30.34 percent belonged to Ratkevičius, 16.06 percent to Mantas Michalauskas, 10.5 percent to the company Sauliaus Investicijos, and the rest to other small shareholders.
According to the data of the State Social Insurance Fund, the company currently employs 3 people.
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