In the court – a criminal case of Petras Gražulis, a member of the Seimas

The prosecutor of the Organized Crime and Corruption Investigation Department (ONKTD) of the Prosecutor General’s Office referred the criminal case investigated by the Central Investigation Board of the Special Investigation Service (STT), in which Petras Gražulis, a member of the Seimas, is accused of abuse, to the Vilnius Regional Court.

This pre-trial investigation was instituted in 2016. The data collected during the investigation allow reasonably to believe that Petras Gražulis, a member of the Seimas, from May 2015 to February 2017 may have sought and received property benefits from one private company acting in the interests of this company and interfering in the activities of other civil servants in Lithuania and Russia without authorisation, as well as offering money to Russian officials, asking to act illegally in the interests of the specified company. According to the prosecutor, by such actions the member of the Seimas systematically, for a long time used his status and influence as a representative of the highest power, diminished the prestige of his duties, the authority of the Seimas and members of the Seimas, violated the principles enshrined in the Constitution and thus violated the oath of a member of the Seimas and as a result the state incurred significant non-property damage.

According to the investigation data, after the receipt of the data that there were found bacteria in the company’s products, the charged offender, acting at the request of the CEO and Commercial Director of the company, allegedly illegally asked civil servants in Lithuania and Russia to act in the company’s interests to prevent the company from being banned from exporting products to Russia and Belarus as a result of the infringements. Acting in the interests of the company, Petras Gražulis, being a member of the Seimas, possibly received property benefits from the company: the company’s funds, used the company’s car free of charge, fuel cards, flight tickets purchased at the company’s expense.

In order to continue this pre-trial investigation and later, after the assessment of all received data, to resolve the issue of referring the case to the court, it was necessary to serve a report on the suspicion to Petras Gražulis, interrogate him as a suspect, perform other procedural actions. However, a person who is entitled to legal immunity of a member of the Seimas provided for in Article 62 Paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania and Article 22 Paragraph 3 of the Statute of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania may not be prosecuted, arrested or otherwise deprived of his or her liberty without the consent of the Seimas. Only the Prosecutor General of the country may apply to the Seimas for the restriction of liberty of a member of the Seimas.

Such application was referred to the Seimas by Evaldas Pašilis, a former Prosecutor General, on 4 June 2019, however, this application was dismissed by the Seimas. After exhausting all available investigative possibilities, the pre-trial investigation was discontinued in autumn of 2019.

On 3 December of last year, Evaldas Pašilis, a former Prosecutor General, repeatedly applied to the Seimas for the abolition of legal immunity of Petras Gražulis and the Seimas allowed to prosecute him. Following the abolition of legal immunity of the member of the Seimas, the above-mentioned pre-trial investigation was reinstituted by the resolution of the prosecutor of the ONKTD of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

Petras Gražulis was charged with abuse. After the performance of all possible procedural actions and assessment of the documents collected during the pre-trial investigation, an indictment was drawn up and the case was referred to the Vilnius Regional Court.

The criminal case consists of 44 volumes of documents.