Baltic Oil Terminals Plc has confirmed that the accounting records for its Kaliningrad operation in respect of the twelve months to 31st December 2010 have now been completed and are being put into final form by a third party accounting firm prior to the group audit.
The news follows the suspension of trading in its ordinary shares on AIM - the London Stock Exchange’s international market for smaller growing companies - after it became clear that the company would not be in a position to send its audited accounts for the year ended 31st December 2010 to shareholders by 30 June 2011 as required under AIM Rule 19.
In early 2011 the company made significant changes to the senior management team at its operations in Kaliningrad, Russia, which included the dismissal of a senior employee. Following these changes Baltic Oil Terminals claimed that 'it became clear' that some of the local financial records had either been destroyed or removed and an attempt made at replacing these with falsified information.
Commenting on the Kaliningrad issue in June, Baltic Oil Terminals said: "The directors do not believe that these actions have led to any previous financial information reported to the market proving erroneous, however, the company has had to conduct an exercise to reconstruct the accounting records at its operations in Kaliningrad based on primary sources of information, in particular the receipts of inventory received into the terminals."
As a result, trading in shares of Baltic Oil Terminals was suspended on June 15th 2011 at 7.30a.m. and have remained in place pending the release of the group's annual accounts and interim results to shareholders.
"The company therefore now expects shortly to be in a position to publish its audited accounts for the year ended 31st December 2010. At the same time the company expects to announce its interim results for the six months ended 30th June 2011," Baltic Oil Terminals said today in a statement.
"The directors remain of the view that the results for the year ended 31st December 2010 will be in line with market expectations and confirm that the company's businesses continue to perform in line with management's expectations," the company added..
Baltic Oil Terminals operates and leases terminals and tank capacity in Kaliningrad and Rotterdam. In December 2010, the company entered into an agreement for the acquisition of
Petroval Bunker International B.V., a fuel oil storage and bunker supply business based in Rotterdam, from
Petroval Pte. Ltd. for US$10.8 million in cash..
Petroval operates two heated fuel oil tanks with a total capacity of 120,000 cubic metres, in
Europoort Rotterdam, which it leases from
Vopak. The current leases expire in April 2014.
