Electoral Commission member prepared Nemunas Dawn funding response

Laura Matjošaitytė, a member of Lithuania’s Central Electoral Commission, prepared a response for the Nemunas Dawn party, the commission’s chair Lina Petronienė confirmed on Monday, LRT reported.

Petronienė showed journalists a document supporting the claim. She said the commission could not remove Matjošaitytė from office, but would consider whether the party had committed a breach.

The commission will examine Nemunas Dawn and the legality of its funding at a meeting on Thursday. Petronienė said political organisations may receive non-monetary donations during an election campaign, but must account for them.

“We did not see any funding or evidence that money had been transferred to Matjošaitytė, so we asked the party for information,” Petronienė said.

Nemunas Dawn responded that it could not disclose the information because it was protected by attorney-client privilege. The party has been asked to provide the information again.

Petronienė said the commission also could not recall Matjošaitytė from her position. That could be done by the justice minister. Lithuania’s Chief Official Ethics Commission has also launched an investigation into Matjošaitytė, which the Justice Ministry plans to take into account.

According to the news portal Delfi, Matjošaitytė, who was working as a lawyer at the time, advised Nemunas Dawn before the 2024 parliamentary election and sought to conceal this from the outset.

In September 2024, slightly more than a month before the election, she allegedly emailed Nemunas Dawn vice-chair Robertas Puchovicius a draft response to the Central Electoral Commission concerning the party’s funding sources. She reportedly asked him to create a new file and copy the text into it so that her metadata would not remain. Puchovicius said he did not remember such correspondence.

Matjošaitytė chaired the Central Electoral Commission from 2017 to 2021 and later became a member. Her nomination was submitted by Nemunas Dawn Justice Minister Rimantas Mockus. She has not commented on whether she provided services to the party, citing attorney-client privilege. The commission has said that she did not recuse herself from votes related to the party.