Lithuanian Supreme Court refuses to suspend businesswoman’s prison sentence

Lithuania’s Supreme Court has refused to suspend the four-year prison sentence of Oksana Sakalauskienė while it considers her appeal in the Vijūnėlė estate corruption case, LRT reported. The court accepted her appeal but ruled that she must continue serving her sentence.

The court will hear the appeal orally. Its public relations representative, Tautvilė Merkevičiūtė, told the news agency ELTA that the court can suspend a sentence only in exceptional cases.

Sakalauskienė was taken into custody by Vilnius police in early October and transferred from a police station to Panevėžys prison, where women serve their sentences. She is the only person in the large-scale corruption case to receive an actual prison term. In addition to the four-year sentence, she must pay a €10,000 fine, and €11,000 will be confiscated from her. Her husband, Ernestas Sakalauskas, was fined €60,000.

The Lithuanian Court of Appeal found that former Druskininkai mayor Ričardas Malinauskas and Aivaras Kadziauskas were rightly convicted of influence-peddling. It found Sakalauskienė guilty of influence-peddling and bribery in the Vijūnėlė estate case and three other cases, including offences committed as part of an organised group. She was also convicted of attempted influence-peddling in cases involving decisions by the Migration Department. Her husband was convicted of influence-peddling as part of an organised group in the estate case.

A former lawyer, Drąsutis Zagreckas, who cooperated with law enforcement and is now a state-protected witness, told investigators that Sakalauskienė had asked him to help secure a favourable ruling in an appeal concerning the estate. In testimony in 2019, he said she asked whether he knew any judges he could approach about overturning a decision at Vilnius Regional Court. He said she mentioned Malinauskas and that €50,000 had been set aside for bribes.

Zagreckas also told investigators that Sakalauskienė brought the money to his Vilnius office and that he passed €30,000 to judge Henrichas Jaglinskis. Jaglinskis later recused himself from the case, and a different judge issued an unfavourable ruling.

The Vijūnėlė estate, ruled to be an illegal structure, was demolished in autumn 2019. Malinauskas has said it was built for him, although its official owner was a businessperson friend, from whom he had planned to buy the completed building.