Marko Lastik’s shareholding at Estonian startup Eurora was seized

Marko Lastik’s shareholding at Estonian tax and customs company Eurora was seized due to the case in the Harju County Court. Marko Lastik and his partner Triin Lastik owned about 30% of Eurora through the private limited company Canderos Assets. In addition, on 28 September, Eurora applied for bankruptcy to the Harju County Court, explaining its lack of sufficient working capital to cover its obligations. It is worth noting that the startup raised $40M in 2022 from Amsterdam-based Connected Capital, Estonian investment firm Change Ventures, Tallinn-based company Equity United, and others.

Founded in 2022 by Marko Lastik, Eurora develops an e-commerce suite of customs compliance tools. It simplifies all processes for small and medium-sized enterprises related to cross-border trade and logistics, collecting taxes, and managing payments. Eurora’s platform allows companies to fully automate global trade and compliance processes with the help of AI-based solutions.

Eurora's owner Marko Lastik has been under two criminal investigations. One is related to his previous company GTS Group. In the summer of 2018, Lastik made a cooperation offer to the investment company Novira Capital, owned by Arle Mölder and Sergey Kolesnikov. Lastik proposed to Novira Capital’s owners to become board partners as investors in his company, which was engaged in logistics. The company had to manage freight trains operating from China to Estonia, which eventually didn’t start working. A subsidiary of Novira, Larix Partners, started a trial against Lastik’s company. It accused Lastik of using its investment for personal use and demanding to return €400K that it had invested in the company. 

The second investigation against Marko Lastik refers to a €1,3M grant, provided to Eurora by the European Regional Development Fund in 2019. The money was given for applied research of the startup’s technology. In March 2023, the State Support Services Centre noticed that Eurora might have not used the grant as it was agreed in the conditions of the contract. It proposed that the money was returned back to Eurora through third companies. However, the State Support Services Centre has recently decided that Eurora has used the grant money correctly and does not have to repay it.

In September, Eurora laid off 111 employees from all over the world, 80 of them- from the Estonian office. The company said that the reason for firing half of the team was related to the restructuring of the business.