LKF (Lithuanian Basketball Federation) Secretary General Mindaugas Balciunas and two other suspects were detained and were presented allegations of the corruption-related offenses by the prosecutors.

Prosecutors of the 2nd Dvision of Criminal Prosecution of Panavezys Regional Prosecutor’s Office together with the officers of the Special Investigation Service are conducting a pre-trial investigation of the alleged abuse of office, fraud and document forgery – to further investigate the legality of use of municipal funds for the reconstruction of Hotel Romantic in Panevezys.

Panevezys was one of the host cities for EuroBasket 2011. The city didn’t have a hotel large enough necessary for hosting the participants. Hotel Romantic was chosen as the official hotel but it needed to be expanded to have the required capacity. The reconstruction of a privately-owned hotel was financed by the funds of Panevezys municipality.

In 2010 LKF and Panevezys municipality signed a agreement worth 2 million litas on the purchase of services of organization of EuroBasket, program of basketball promotion and development in the city, even though it could have been known that this agreement will not properly executed and the invoices for the services will be falsified.

Panevezys, in addition to hosting EuroBasket 2011 group stage games, has also hosted a number of friendly of Lithuanian national team and co-hosted 2012 U16 European Championship for Men as well as other international games.

LKF refuses to make any comments on the allegations presented to Mindaugas Balciunas.