The court rejected the lawyers’ request to return the Panevėžys mayor’s abuse case to the prosecutor

The lawyer of RM Račkauskas, Valentinas Baltrūnas, asked the court to return the case to the prosecutor for an additional investigation of the evidence.

According to V. Baltrūnas, the prosecutor must name the exact damage caused to the state, which part of the survey of Panevėžys benefited RM Račkauskas. This survey was one of the pieces of evidence included in the case.

According to the lawyer, if the prosecutor does not specify the real damage, the court cannot objectively evaluate the real circumstances.

V. Baltrūnas also requested that the prosecutor submit the full audio recordings made by the investigators in November 2017 from the Panevėžys mayor’s office. According to V. Baltrūnas, following examining the phrases specified in the judgments of both instances, he is convinced that the recordings are fabricated.

“I don’t want to be mean, but I have to say something. (…) This is a edited text that gives a completely different meaning”, V. Baltrūnas asserted.

G. Maskoliūnienė’s lawyer, Snieguolė Jurskytė-Ignatavičienė, also submitted a similar request to return the case to the prosecutor, resume the investigation of the evidence and cancel the decision of the first instance court.

“The indictment is drawn up with flaws, the factual circumstances do not correspond to the circumstances stated in the case,” said the lawyer.

Prosecutor Darius Valys briefly read the indictment once more during the hearing and said that the requests to return the investigation are redundant, and that the damage done wrongly stated in the document can be repaired without returning the case to the prosecutor, but simply by examining it in court.

“The accusation is understandable and clear, there are no arguments to transfer the case to the prosecutor”, said D. Valys.

The prosecutor also saw no need to comply with the request to listen to the full audio recordings from the mayor’s office.

“I didn’t hear arguments today that it was necessary to listen to all those recordings,” said D. Valys.

The panel of judges rejected the lawyers’ request to return the case to the prosecutor. As Aušra Bielskė, the president of the college, said following the meeting, such a procedural decision is one of the ways of decision in the final act, but not during the appeal process.

“During the appeal process, the court has the right to collect and examine evidence, to speak regarding the scope of the charges and their narrowing,” said A. Bielskė.

At that time, following satisfying the lawyers’ request for audio recordings, the court ordered the prosecutor to submit them in full.

“For six years, I have been hearing the lies and interpretations of the prosecutor’s office, which absolutely distort the situation,” RM Račkauskas told BNS following the hearing.

The mayor of Panevėžys said that he would not comment on the court’s decision to reject part of the requests of his and G. Maskoliūnienė’s defenders.

“There is a process, there are procedural things,” he said.

The court should return to hearing the case on April 8.

Found guilty of abuse

The mayor of Panevėžys and his adviser at the time, and now the vice-mayor, G. Maskoliūnienė, were found guilty by the court of first instance of abuse of office while working in a group of accomplices, and acquitted by the court of appeal.

The court of first instance decided two years ago that the head of Panevėžys, through his adviser G. Maskoliūnienė, gave illegal instructions to the municipality’s employees, thus aiming for the winner of the public tenders organized by the municipality in the field of publicity and communication, “Lukrecijos reklama”, a company related to businessman Marius Vaupš.

According to the data of the case, it was also agreed on further cooperation, that is, that the Panevėžys city municipality administration will continue to purchase consulting services from the company represented by M. Vaupš in the future. In addition to the services officially purchased by the municipality, RM Račkauskas was also given personally, as a politician, useful consultations in preparation for the 2019 municipal mayoral elections.

The Šiauliai District Court then found the mayor guilty and awarded him 30,000. EUR fine, the Mayor was deprived of the right to work in the civil service for five years, and more than 5 thousand were also confiscated. euros.

25 thousand was allocated to G. Maskoliūnien. EUR fine, she was also deprived of the right to work in the civil service for five years. M. Vaupšas is dead, so the case once morest him was terminated.

Returned for examination

Last January, the Court of Appeal acquitted both defendants following finding that the court of first instance wrongly assessed the actions of RM Račkauskas and G. Maskoliūnienė as criminal, incorrectly applied the criminal law, and therefore unjustifiably passed a guilty verdict.

When acquitting RM Račkauskas, the court claimed that it was based on the extent of the possible damage, which was not such as to attract criminal liability.

Last December, the Supreme Court of Lithuania (LAT) returned this case to the Court of Appeal.

LAT then noted that both the first instance and appeals courts found that the circumstances stated in the indictment were confirmed, but the appeals court found that the actions of the mayor and his advisor did not cause significant damage to the state.

The court stated that the appellate court, while acquitting RM Račkauskas and G. Maskoliūnienė, did not base its decision on a detailed and impartial analysis of the evidence collected in the case, ignored significant data collected for the proper qualification of this act, and overemphasized others.

Acquitted more than once

This is not the only case in which the mayor of Panevėžys was acquitted.

LAT upheld RM Račkauskas’ acquittal for influence peddling and abuse last October.

According to the prosecutor’s office, in the spring of 2019, while visiting the office of the manager of the basketball club “Lietkabelis” in Vilnius, RM Račkauskas allegedly asked a businessman for a favor – to cover the 3 thousand. euro debt remaining following the municipal elections.

It was stated in the case that for this RM Račkauskas promised that several companies managed by Panevėžys city municipality would provide additional financial support to the basketball club led by the resident of Vilnius in addition to the already allocated from the city budget.

The General Prosecutor’s Office sought to have the case returned to the Court of Appeal for consideration, but the prosecutor’s appeal was rejected – this decision of the LAT is final and cannot be appealed.