Estonia, Legislation, Port, Transport

Neinar Seli.

Seli was elected EOC president last week. Parts said then that Seli should leave the council of Tallinna Sadam or stop allocating sponsorship money. Tallinna Sadam has been a major sponsor of both EOC and sports associations. Seli said yesterday that he will resign from Tallinna Sadam sponsorship committee.

"First, with state-owned companies, the fundamental risk of conflict of interests has to be ruled out," Parts said. He said that a state owned company should support only projects connected directly to the company's business interests. "Tallinna Sadam or Eesti Energia cannot be a mini-Culture Capital. A business enterprise can base its sponsorship activities only on business interests. Rather the state should withdraw more dividends from companies and support sports more from the state treasury," said Parts.

The daily said though that Parts threatens to ban Tallinna Sadam from sponsoring sports association since he has differences of opinion with port council chairman Seli over large projects.

Seli said that there is no conflict of interest. "This is a searched reason, I don’t see a conflict of interests in supporting sports, there are other reasons here," said Seli. He mentioned the Rail Garant agreement. Russian railways firm Rail Garant should build a container terminal in the port but has frozen its project in Tallinn to wait for the solution to a court process initiated by its local competitor. Another dispute between Seli and Parts is icebreaking. Tallinna Sadam will buy an icebreaker and will have to start operating it to keep Estonian ports ice free.