Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Legislation, Port, Transport

"We are in the final stages with a complaint to the European Commission already," Leedo said at a May 12 meeting with the Committee of Investigation to Identify Possible Corruption Risks in the Public Limited Company Port of Tallinn.

"It took us seven months to go through [the documents] and there's a 90% likelihood that there was a gross violation of general principles. The claim is not big, somewhere in the region of 97-98 million euros," Leedo said according to the transcript published with the findings of the survey on June 14th.

"If it comes out that there were violations, the state faces having to pay back that money, plus a double-sized fine, and the next step will be compensating us for our losses. Altogether this could mean approximately 300- 400 million euros," Leedo, whose businesses lost the 2014 tender for a 10-year contract to operate subsidized island ferry services to a subsidiary of the state-owned company Port of Tallinn, said.

Leedo said that SLK, too, held negotiations with the Polish shipbuilder Remontowa to have two brand new ferries built.

"The boats were a little bit smaller. There were projects – one was 86 meters, the other 156 meters, projects for two boats. They have changed the project a bit. Now the length of the boat in the projects is 114 meters," Leedo said.

He said that during their negotiations Remontowa offered to build the ferries for 24.4 million or 24.5 million euros. "We turned it down and developed the project of a boat ourselves," he said.

"Now, when Remontowa has started building the boats, it has been revealed that the ramps are not consistent with these new boats, because the terms of the tender have been grossly violated and the quays are not consistent either," he said. "The next step is that the quays must be extended. One meter costs approximately one million."

Another possibility would be to use anchor poles, but that would cost approximately 4-5 million euros too. Extending costs something too, Leedo said.

Leedo, whose companies have operated subsidized services to Estonia's two largest western islands since the 1990s, argued that things are worst with the Hiiumaa route where a vessel must not be longer than 100 meters.

"When the boats are completed, four years from now the government will have to pay 30-60 million euros to dredge the channels," he said.

Leedo said he had learned that no work was being done at the Polish shipyard for the third consecutive month. "More money is being asked. An extension of deadline is being asked," he added.

"With Turkey the thing is that these port quys were lucky. They bought one boat that Norwegians had built for themselves. As a matter of fact, Turkey is building one boat now, the one that was commissioned. They bought one hull that had been built already. This is good. Because of this, they are on schedule building the one boat. The boat was half completed when the tender was still under way," Leedo said.