Fraudulent Finnish energy supplier Perlas Energija investigated

On Wednesday night, Pocius told reporters that VERT turned to the Prosecutor General's Office over a completely different issue, having looked at certain specifics of Perlas Energija's activities, and then assessed the potential risk of Perlas Energija receiving unjustified revenue from financial instruments.

The suspicion is that Perlas Energija is terminating contracts to earn revenue from other activities, the sale of financial instruments, which would therefore be deemed unjustified revenue.

The VERT chairman said that the sale of financial products would constitute unjustified revenue for the company because of the fact that Perlas Energija is believed to have terminated its contracts with consumers to earn revenue from another activity.

Perlas Energija's financial instruments are hedging instruments that the company used to hedge against electricity price fluctuations in Finland, Pocius said.

According to BNS, Vilius Juraitis, CEO of Perlas Energija, confirmed that the company has financial hedging instruments in several foreign countries, but he refrained from revealing specific locations.

Pocius says that the electricity supplier in Finland has the majority of such financial instruments. He said that the energy watchdog has contacted other independent suppliers to find out what financial instruments they have.

On Wednesday, VERT asked the prosecutors to initiate proceedings against Perlas Energija to defend public interests after it announced plans to make unilateral changes to the terms of its contracts with consumers. VERT asked prosecutors to put in place temporary restrictions on Perlas Energija's assets.

Perlas Energija announced earlier this month that it is terminating its contracts with more than 180,000 customers who picked fixed-price plans and offered them the option to pay the exchange price for electricity or choose another supplier.