It was previously examined that shifts lasting up to 12 hours were registered as only four and a half hours, and this scheme could have saved the company tens of millions of Norwegian kroner annually.
According to the portal NRK.no, insufficient wages were paid to 200 truck drivers.
V. Stončius Jr. was the CEO and chairman of the board of the company “Vlantana Norge,” which started operations in Norway in 2012.
The company quickly took a large share of the Norwegian freight transport market.
However, it eventually became clear that the company systematically underpaid Lithuanian drivers by using falsified work time accounting sheets. As a result, the company’s transport license was revoked and bankruptcy proceedings were declared in 2020.
But the case of “Vlantana Norge” did not end there. Last year, the prosecutor’s office filed charges against V. Stončius Jr. for violations of the Labor Environment Act and the Public Accessibility Act.
The case was heard this winter in the Eidsvoll District Court, and the prosecutor requested a 15-month prison sentence for Stončius Jr., and a five-month prison sentence for his assistant Ovidijus Grigalavičius.
As reported by the Norwegian media portal Frifagbevegelse.no, the court found that Stončius Jr. was well aware of the insufficient wages for drivers because they were employed fictitiously as part-time workers, although they worked much more.
“He was familiar with the company’s actual wage system and knew that drivers worked more hours but received a lower hourly wage than the overall collective wage rate,” the decision further states.
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Initially, the court thought the sentence should be 13 months, but the sentence was shortened considering that the trial took a very long time.
The court considered that a six-month sentence would have been appropriate for Ovidijus Grigalavičius, but he was ultimately sentenced to 120 days imprisonment for the same reason as Stončius Jr.
The court also had to consider legal claims from 39 drivers. These were related to unpaid wages, unpaid interest, low unemployment benefits, and compensation for legal costs.
In total, Vlad Stončius Jr. was ordered to pay nearly 1.75 million kroner.
O. Grigalavičius, besides the prison sentence, was ordered to pay only 10 thousand kroner in legal costs.
Another case related to the “Vlantana” freight transport company is being heard in the Klaipėda District Court.
The carrier company “Vlantana,” which has nearly 2,000 employees, and its owners, brothers Antanas and Vladas Stončiai, are accused of fraudulent bookkeeping and failing to pay 150 thousand euros in VAT to the state budget.
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