LRT council warns director over procurement transparency breach

LRT reported that its council has found public broadcaster director general Monika Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė in breach of her duties, issuing her a warning rather than removing her from office.

“In football terms, a yellow card has been issued, a warning. This is not considered a serious breach,” council chairman Mindaugas Jurkynas said.

The council recommended that Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė pay particular attention to implementing transparency and accountability principles in LRT procurement. The decision could lead to her dismissal only if she is found to have committed another similar breach of her duties within 12 months.

Jurkynas declined to say how many council members supported the decision, saying the number would be recorded in minutes that are not public. Council member Deimantas Jastramskis said 11 members attended the meeting in person and one member had submitted a vote in advance. Four members, including Jastramskis, Daiva Daugirdienė, Vita Akstinaitė and Dainius Žvirdauskas, declined to vote.

Jastramskis said the four members disagreed with the wording of the decision, which he described as inaccurate and inconsistent with the LRT Law and the Labour Code. He also questioned the document’s authorship, saying it was effectively anonymous and had been poorly prepared, with inconsistencies and flaws in its logic.

Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė said she would consider her next steps, adding that challenging the decision in court would be difficult. She called the decision unlawful in several respects, saying deadlines had been missed and that she had not been given proper legal defence because her lawyer was not allowed to participate in the meeting in person.

She described the decision as pressure intended to make her compliant and said it was paving the way for her dismissal. She also referred to a letter signed by Jurkynas in April and sent to the Seimas, in which he supported not making the names of authors and suppliers public.

The council considered the director’s responsibility after the prosecutor’s office found earlier this summer that LRT had breached the principles of the institution’s operations and accountability, as well as the public’s right to know how funds were used, by failing to disclose data on service providers for 2025 at the beginning of this year.

Jurkynas previously told BNS that the council had a duty to determine who was responsible after the prosecutor’s office established the breaches. Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė’s lawyer, Tomas Bagdanskis, said the prosecutor’s conclusion did not in itself mean that the director general was responsible, noting that the LRT council had also participated in the decisions not to disclose the data.