Former Lewben owner V. Kavaliauskas' business empire served the Eastern elite

 

"Millions of dollars were transferred through the accounts of Pacific Private Bank, a bank operating in the Pacific island of Vanuatu and now controlled by the founders of Bankera, when it was managed by businessman Vilius Kavaliauskas, in complex chains of loans, offshore companies and intermediary payments - they are connected to Lithuanian, Belarusian and Russian businessmen.

 

This is shown by a new joint investigation by "15min", OCCRP, the Belarusian Research Center (BIC), Interest.co.nz and Expressen.

 

According to him, most of the transactions took place at a time when the bank was owned by V. Kavaliauskas, the founder of the asset management company Lewben. His lawyers deny that he or his companies contributed to illegal financial activities and insist that V. Kavaliauskas was not involved in the operational activities of Pacific Private Bank.

 

Some of the payments were made by Pacific Private Bank through the now-defunct New Zealand financial institution Worldclear. As local authorities later determined, the latter only partially complied with money laundering prevention requirements, and in some cases completely ignored them. Leaked data shows that over a couple of years, Worldclear processed Pacific Private Bank transactions for at least 34 million euros.

 

Businessman Vitold Tomaševskis’ company Bestaniaco guaranteed a 16.5 million euro loan to Russian businessman Maxim Zhukov’s company Invest Alliance. Ultimately, this loan was covered by Pacific Private Bank not by Invest Alliance, but by Bestaniaco itself.

 

The Cypriot company Wallitus, one of whose beneficiaries is V. Kavaliauskas, transferred at least 3.4 million USD to Aleksej Aleksin, known as A. Lukashenko’s “wallet”. Some of the payments were rejected by banks, but later their structure was changed and attempts were made to resend them.

 

Before each payment from Wallitus to A. Aleksin, another Cypriot company, Sumsteg, transferred a similar or identical amount to Wallitus. It was related to A. Aleksin's family circle and at the same time concluded hundreds of millions of oil product supply contracts with Belarusian energy companies controlled by him.

 

Bankera acquired Pacific Private Bank from V. Kavaliauskas in 2018.

 

The majority of the transactions analyzed in the study took place in 2017 - that year, classified information provided by the State Security Department (VSD) became the basis for recognizing Lewben's related company, Lewben Investment Management, as not meeting national security interests due to its connections with individuals from non-EU and non-NATO countries.

 

In 2019, Lewben Investment Management appealed this decision to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), but in 2023 it lost the case against Lithuania. This did not prevent Lewben, founded by V. Kavaliauskas in 2023, from winning the Bank of Lithuania (LB) tender to consult on updating money laundering prevention procedures.

 

The agreement between the LB and Lewben mentions the transfer of confidential documents from the LB to Lewben, including process descriptions, customer knowledge procedures, and rules for their risk assessment and sanctions screening. Although the agreement mentions that all documents transferred to Lewben are confidential, LB's 15min denied having transferred this information.

 

The name of Pacific Private Bank was heard in Lithuania last year in the Bankera scandal. An investigation by 15min and OCCRP revealed that Bankera, which had attracted more than 100 million euros from investors, directed part of the funds to a private bank in Vanuatu owned by its founders, from where it bought luxury homes and distributed million-dollar loans to its own people.

 

Following the investigation published by “15min”, Lithuanian law enforcement agencies have launched a pre-trial investigation into possible legalization, misappropriation and waste of criminally obtained assets.

 

In 2025, V. Kavaliauskas sold shares in “Lewben” (now “Noewe”) to the company’s partners.

 

It has been announced that the Central Bank of Vanuatu revoked the license of “Pacific Private Bank” last November, and disputes are ongoing in the courts.”