LRT council warns director over procurement transparency breach

LRT’s council has ruled that public broadcaster director-general Monika Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė improperly performed her duties, but said the breach was not serious enough to warrant her dismissal, LRT reported.

“In football terms, this is a yellow card, a warning. It cannot be considered a serious breach,” LRT council chairman Mindaugas Jurkynas said.

The council also recommended that Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė pay particular attention to transparency and accountability in LRT procurement procedures. The decision does not remove her from office. Jurkynas said dismissal could be considered if she is found to have committed a similar breach within 12 months.

Jurkynas declined to say how many council members voted in favour of 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, did not take part in the vote.

Jastramskis said the four members refused to vote because they disagreed with the wording of the decision, which he said was inaccurate and contradicted the LRT law and the Labour Code.

“It is difficult to understand why colleagues and lawyers prepared such a document,” he said, describing it as anonymous in terms of its authorship and poorly drafted, with inconsistencies and problems in its internal logic.

Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė said she would consider her next steps, including whether to challenge the decision in court. She said the decision was unlawful because of its content and missed deadlines, and that she had not been given proper legal protection because her lawyer was not allowed to attend the meeting in person.

She described the decision as pressure intended to make her more compliant and to pave the way for her dismissal.

The council considered her responsibility after the prosecutor’s office found earlier this year that LRT had breached the principles of institutional operation and accountability, as well as the public’s right to know how public funds were used, by failing to disclose data on service providers from 2025.

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