Lithuania’s prosecutor general seeks to strip MP Skvernelis of legal immunity

Lithuania’s Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė will formally request that parliament lift the legal immunity of MP Saulius Skvernelis, the former leader of the Democrats’ Union “For Lithuania” party, LRT reports.

The move, set to be presented during Tuesday’s plenary session, follows Grunskienė’s signed request last week. If approved, the measure would allow prosecutors to charge Skvernelis, question him under suspicion, and potentially impose pretrial restrictions.

According to the prosecution’s filing, Skvernelis allegedly accepted a €51,000 bribe through his former advisor Agnė Silickienė. The funds were purportedly transferred by Jurijus Kornijenko, the dismissed head of the State Plant Service, who is already implicated in a large-scale corruption case alongside several other individuals.

Skvernelis announced on the same day that he would suspend his party membership but stated he had not yet decided whether to voluntarily waive his immunity. He confirmed he would not resign his parliamentary seat.

Civic activist and Skvernelis’s former advisor Skirmantas Malinauskas claimed in a broadcast interview that the ex-party leader had discussed with Social Democratic Party (LSDP) representatives how to vote to preserve his immunity. However, acting Democrats’ Union leader Virginijus Sinkevičius denied any such negotiations.

“There are suggestions in public discourse that our party might engage in talks with the Social Democrats on how to vote regarding the immunity of a particular politician. This is not happening,” Sinkevičius wrote on Facebook. He stressed the faction would vote in favour of lifting immunity whenever requested by the Prosecutor General’s Office.