Government finds no misconduct by head of Food and Veterinary Service

The Lithuanian government has concluded that Audronė Mikalauskienė, director of the State Food and Veterinary Service (VMVT), did not commit any official misconduct, LRT reports.

A commission investigating a complaint from a dismissed employee found that, while courts had ruled her 2024 dismissal during service reforms unlawful, this alone was insufficient to establish official misconduct on Mikalauskienė’s part.

Earlier, Agriculture Minister Andrius Palionis had formed a separate commission that recommended imposing a disciplinary reprimand on Mikalauskienė and ordering her to compensate the state for damages. However, Renata Sadzevičiūtė-Vilkelė, head of the Government Chancellery’s Personnel Management Division and chair of the prime minister’s commission, stated that the ministry’s proposed government resolution on the reprimand had been submitted “not in accordance with legal acts” and that her commission’s investigation would be broader.

In late January, the government approved an initiative by the then acting agriculture minister from the “Nemuno Aušra” party to audit the Food and Veterinary Service’s activities. The service later sought through the courts to have the government’s decision to evaluate its work declared unlawful and annulled, but the Regional Administrative Court refused to accept the service’s complaint on May 20.