Bar association to investigate Matjošaitytė’s undeclared work for party

Lithuania’s Bar Association will examine whether election commission member and lawyer Laura Matjošaitytė breached professional rules by providing legal services to the Nemuno Aušra party without declaring them, LRT reported on Wednesday.

The association’s Discipline and Consumer Disputes Committee will review the circumstances at a meeting. Matjošaitytė has been invited and said she would attend remotely. The association decided to open an investigation on September 18 to assess whether her conduct complied with the Law on the Bar and the Lithuanian Code of Professional Ethics for Lawyers. The findings are expected to be considered by the Bar Council on October 24.

Opposition Homeland Union–Lithuanian Christian Democrats lawmakers Giedrė Balčytytė and Arvydas Anušauskas asked the Bar Council to assess possible breaches of the Election Code and lawyers’ ethics rules, including issues concerning Matjošaitytė’s advice to the party, professional secrecy and whether she should have recused herself from Central Electoral Commission matters involving Nemuno Aušra.

The Central Electoral Commission and the Chief Official Ethics Commission are also examining aspects of Matjošaitytė’s conduct. The Special Investigation Service decided not to open a pre-trial investigation. On Tuesday, parliament voted on removing her from the electoral commission, but the motion did not receive enough votes.

The questions arose after news outlet Delfi reported that Matjošaitytė may have advised Nemuno Aušra and helped prepare its response to the electoral commission. She said she had not been paid for the advice. Delfi also reported that in September 2024, more than a month before the parliamentary election, she sent party deputy chairman Robertas Puchovičius a draft response to the commission and asked him to copy it into his own Word document so that her metadata would not remain.

The electoral commission said metadata showed that Matjošaitytė had prepared the party’s response to questions about membership fees. She chaired the commission from 2017 to 2021 and returned as a member last year, following a nomination by then Justice Minister Rimantas Mockus.

Ethics commission to consider possible undeclared ties

The Chief Official Ethics Commission is also due to decide on Wednesday whether to investigate possible undeclared ties between Matjošaitytė and Martynas Endrijaitis, head of the State Tax Inspectorate.

Communications specialist Karolis Žukauskas asked the commission to consider the matter. He has claimed on Facebook that Matjošaitytė and Endrijaitis are a couple and live together, and that they have not disclosed their relationship in private-interest declarations. Public officials are required to include information about their partners in those declarations.

Delfi reported that Endrijaitis denies the claims. He said he knows Matjošaitytė as a public figure, has occasionally encountered her in the course of his official duties and met her at an official presidential reception for Statehood Day.