Suspicious Seimas member Justas Džiugelis retorts to Andris Tapinas: “This is not true”

Andrius Tapinas, the initiator of the “Skaidrinam” campaign, announced on Tuesday that the expenses of J. Džiugelis were under the magnifying glass.

He stumbled upon spending more than 23,000 for the printing and distribution of J. Džiugel’s report on the activities of the member of the Seimas. euros.

A large sum for a political consultant

A. Tapinas claims to have found out that J. Džiugelis prepared activity reports for a natural person – Mindaugas Ardišauskas for large sums.

“When I calculated his expenses for the preparation of reports on the activity of a member of the Seimas for the first time, I was at a loss to understand how it is possible to spend more than 23,000 euros on printing and distributing the report in three years. We have printed publications in huge editions – 300,000 copies each – and they did not cost as much as Djugelis did. And how absurd would it be for a member of the Seimas to spend more than 20,000 taxpayers’ money to publish a publication about his activities with a circulation of half a million?” – writes A. Tapinas.

He assumes that a member of the Seimas has been paying his political consultant, who helped him during the Seimas elections, for several years with taxpayers’ money.

“Justas Džiugelis has been submitting invoices to the Seimas accounting department for three years, which are written out to him by one and the same person – Mindaugas Ardišauskas, who works on an individual basis,” says A. Tapinas.

According to him, M. Ardišauskas is a former shareholder and general director of the public relations agency “Fabula”, who later became an independent political consultant. In addition, since February, he is the head of the Responsible Gambling Business Association.

Julius Kalinskas / 15min photo/Mindaugas Ardišauskas

At the same time, M. Ardišauskas also provided communication services to J. Džiugelius according to the contract concluded in June 2020.

“What does this mean? And the fact that Justas Džiugelis paid his political consultant with our money for three years according to most likely fictitious accounts”, claimed A. Tapinas.

J. Džiugelis: “No, Andriau, this is not true”

The member of the Seimas assures that A. Tapinas is wrong, but assures that the wording of the bill does not reflect the entire spectrum of purchased services. He posted his position on Facebook. Here is his position:

“I’ll just give you the gist:

1. Seimas election campaign – everything was done according to the letter of the law, everything was paid for and submitted to the CEC. I submitted a report to “Laisvės TV”.

2. Communication of activities of a member of the Seimas (consultations, etc.) – I bought the necessary services from a competent person. Everything went according to the letter of the LRS statute. Except for the wording on the bill, which “did not reflect the full range of services purchased.” Oh well, I’ve learned my lesson, I won’t do it again. By the way, I’m looking for a communication person to join the team, send me a PM.

What’s next … hmm … like nothing else.

Aa, bet Birutė Davidonytė throws up “that ex-consultant of yours turned gambling lobbyist.” So what? The person informed me in December that he wants to change his professional orientation and go into lobbying, so he will have to finish his former job together.

What else? However, you became interested in gambling, although no one at SRDK was interested before? And how can you not be interested if your friends in LPT are constantly complaining that Lithuania has lost?

Therefore, I organized a series of questions for SRDK, meetings with FinMin, LPT, SAM, market participants were heard and eventually the contours of the problem began to emerge. Generally speaking, gambling regulation in Lithuania, although quite strict, is not very effective. The legal market develops chaotically, while the unfettered illegal market thrives.

I gave a series of signals to the Ministry of Finance and the Gambling Supervision Service subordinate to it – in principle, I did not receive any reaction to change the flawed situation. I had to take initiatives myself and register proposals with my colleagues on raising the age barrier for gamblers and curbing the illegal market.

Attention! Which of my registered offers is good for gaming business? Raise the age barrier to 21? Is this – to fight against disability gambling market, which does not pay any taxes, in which, Stepukonis left 15 million. out of all 20 million lose?

And now I’m going to shoot you, Birut, in your style – who can deny that you’re doing all this hype to influence the Baltcap ringleaders, who desperately need to divert attention from themselves?

I said it in the summer, and I repeat it now – the advertising ban is pointless, because the illegal market only thrives, so restrictions are needed. A comprehensive review of gambling regulation is needed. There is a need for serious institutional and personal responsibility of the LPT manager.

But instead, we have a bunch of deductions and a summary: “we have a very dangerous situation where a politician pays a personal friend – a lobbyist of the gambling business – with public money.”

No, Andriau, this is not true, it simply goes beyond the facts”, says J. Džiugelis.

A. Tapinas: The situation of J. Džiugelis is getting very strange

A. Tapinas does not remain in debt and raises even more doubts about J. Džiugelis. We publish A. Tapin’s post on Facebook.

BNS photo Andrius Tapinas

“The situation of Seimas member Justas Džiugelis is becoming very strange and really deserves the attention and investigation of the institutions.

He pays a natural person Mindaugas Ardišauskas 26,000 euros according to invoices identically marked “Preparation of the Seimas member’s report”. Ardišauskas was his election campaign communication consultant. He confirmed to us that Dziugelis paid him money during the campaign.

Today on the Laisvės TV program, Justas Džiugelis explains that Mindaugas Ardišauskas did not prepare reports for him, but wrote press releases, helped prepare speeches and Facebook posts, but the Seimas office has not been provided with any evidence that this was the case. Maybe there will be more.

Ardisauskas’ services were needed because the advisors of the Seimas member are not qualified to prepare such information.

“Democracy is expensive” – ​​26,000 euros spent, justifies Džiugelis.

In the show, it turns out that Mindaugas Ardišauskas is a personal friend of Justas Džiugelis.

Since February, Ardišauskas heads the Responsible Gambling Business Association, represents the interests of the gambling business.

Coworker Birutė Davidonytėwho prepared the study “I’m Building Everything”, notices that recently Justas Džiugelis has taken an active interest in gambling regulation issues, taking a position favorable to the gambling business, and stated that all gambling issues would be considered by the Social Affairs Committee headed by him.

I looked at the statistics – out of the last ten press releases from Džiugel, five are about gambling

If we take one month – for example October, then, according to Džiugel, he paid 1000 euros of our money for Ardišauskas to prepare one press release about gambling, one photo on Facebook of Džiugel with a cat and one post on Facebook about the need rank conservative candidates.

This means that Džiugelis himself admits that the person currently in charge of the gambling business association wrote him reports about the regulation of the gambling business and that it was paid for with parliamentary funds.

Here are quotes from Džiugelis/Ardašauskas reports:

“There is no objective data to show that there has been a significant increase in gambling addiction or problem gambling”

“I am a supporter of information, education and training” – says Džiugelis” – this quote is simply recorded for Džiugelis by gambling lobbyists, who all the time explain that it is not necessary to limit their business, but to educate people and then everything will be fine.

“It is necessary to form a correct attitude towards gambling – as a specific form of entertainment” – another argument of the lobbyists

“Politicians sometimes take too little weighted or isolated regulatory initiatives” – same thing again.

Then it becomes clear why Ardišauskas wrote “Preparation of Seimas member’s report” in the accounts – so that it would not be revealed that he was writing press releases to Džiugelis.

Logical questions arise – how the gambling lobby will reward Džiugelis during the upcoming election campaign, whether they can spend 26,000 euros of taxpayers’ money in this way, and in general, what happened to them.

Summary: we have a very dangerous situation where a politician pays a personal friend, a gambling business lobbyist, with public money to write press releases in which the politician repeats the gambling business arguments verbatim, the invoices issued do not correspond to reality and there are no supporting documents.