Lithuanian prosecutors asked to probe FlyLAL bankruptcy.
Lithuanian authorities said Monday they have asked prosecutors to probe suspicions that intentional mismanagement drove the Baltic state's flagship airline FlyLAL into bankruptcy last week.
"The ministry has turned to the national prosecutor's office. The file we gave them was pretty hefty," transport minister spokeswoman Irina Sklepovic told AFP.
In a statement, the ministry said that it had grounds to suspect that the carrier's leadership had knowingly mismanaged the formerly state-owned company in order to send it bankrupt.
Sklepovic declined to say why the authorities' suspicions had been aroused, or why it could have been in the interests of FlyLAL's management to send the airline to the wall.
FlyLAL -- also known by its full name FlyLAL-Lithuanian Airlines -- filed for bankruptcy last Friday, a week after the country's aviation authorities had grounded it and a court had frozen its assets as a salvage deal unravelled.
On January 9, FlyLAL had announced its sale to Swiss Capital Holding (SCH), later saying that the Zurich-based group was acting for Middle Eastern investors.
But on January 17, a day after the grounding, FlyLAL had accused SCH of failing to respect its side of the bargain, and said it was voiding the sale and was poised to go bankrupt.
FlyLAL has debts of around 90 million litas (26 million euros, 34 million dollars).
In December, the airline had sought government aid, proposing to sell the authorities a 51-percent stake for a symbolic one litas, but the transport ministry rejected the idea.
FlyLAL was the market leader in Lithuania, a nation of 3.4 million people which joined the European Union in 2004.
Despite increasing its passenger numbers by 52 percent in 2008, it could not overcome growing debt.
Lithuanian officials blamed tough competition from airBaltic, based in neighbouring Latvia, as well as the effects of high fuel prices and the global financial crisis.
FlyLAL was privatised in 2005, with Lithuanian groups ZIA Valda, Indeco, Sanitex and VA REALS holding stakes of 40.73 percent, 27.15 percent, 22.63 percent and 9.49 percent respectively.
In 2007, it posted a loss of 8.1 million litas (2.35 million euros, 3.2 million dollars) on revenues of 262.9 million litas.
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