The Panevėžys Regional Court has found the political party ‘Order and Justice’ and five natural persons guilty of influence peddling and other corruption crimes. The court fined the party EUR 112 thousand and seized the party’s property for more than EUR 279 thousand.
Upon the assessment of the data collected during the pre-trial investigation by the Vilnius Board of the Special Investigation Service (now the Central Investigation Board), the court found that a person who held a leading position in the ‘Order and Justice’ is guilty of influence peddling, fraudulent management of accounts and squandering of property, forgery of a document and possession of a forged document. The court sentenced him by imprisonment for 4 years suspending the sentence for 2 years.
Two natural persons have been found guilty of influence peddling, squandering of property, forgery of a document and possession of a forged document, and two accused persons – of squandering of property, forgery of a document, possession of a forged document and fraudulent management of accounts. They were sentenced by imprisonment for a term from 2 to 4 years suspending the sentence. In addition, all persons conditionally sentenced will have to pay by EUR 753 to the Crime Victims Fund. One person was acquitted, as the court did not found that he had committed acts having the features of a criminal offense.
The political party ‘Order and Justice’ has been found guilty of promising and agreeing through its representative with two people to accept a bribe from them and promised for this to influence the officials of the Ministry of the Interior to help the specified companies win the public procurement organised by the Department of Asset Management and Economy under the Ministry of the Interior and one state enterprise. After the transfer of funds to the accounts of companies managed by another person according to the instructions of these private persons, the publicity services of the party were paid for. Thus, a total bribe LTL 519,839 (EUR 150,555) was accepted for the benefit and interests of the party.
The political party ‘Order and Justice’ has also been found guilty of abetting through its representative one of the accused to use knowingly false documents and transfer funds to another company’s account to pay for publicity services provided to the party, thus squandering the large value property of the company amounting to LTL 484,000 (EUR 140,176).
This pre-trial investigation was completed and remanded to the trial court on 25 October 2018. The remanded criminal case consisted of 166 volumes or more than 30 thousand documents. The state accusation in this first instance court proceedings was supported by the prosecutors of the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Panevėžys Regional Prosecutor’s Office, and the pre-trial investigation was carried out by the Vilnius Board of the STT (now the Central Investigation Board).
The judgement has not validated and may be appealed within 20 days of its passing.
