Contractor says €3,000 cash was a Christmas gift, not a bribe

A construction site manager accused of bribing a Lithuanian defence employee with €3,000, wine and snacks told a court he meant the package as a Christmas gift, LRT reported.

Evaldas Gudynas, a shareholder and site manager at Vilnius construction company Versiculus, denied giving a bribe at a hearing at Kaunas District Court in Kaišiadorys on Thursday. Asked by prosecutor Darius Valkavičius whether he had paid a bribe, Gudynas said: “No, I didn’t. I may have overestimated our relationship and acted inappropriately.”

Gudynas said he had arranged to meet Lithuanian Armed Forces building maintenance engineer Ignas Šaudys near the Akropolis shopping and entertainment centre in Kaunas last December. He said he handed Šaudys a bag containing an envelope with €3,000 in cash, a bottle of wine and snacks as a Christmas present. Gudynas said the money was his own and that he had kept it in cash to protect his family in case of war.

He said the two had developed a warm relationship while work was being carried out on a construction contract, but acknowledged that Šaudys had never asked him for a gift. Gudynas said the work site was locked and work was not under way at the time of their meeting. He told the court he now viewed his actions as wrong and had not considered whether they were lawful.

Šaudys, an engineer with the Lithuanian Armed Forces Logistics Board’s Garrison Service, previously testified that he reported the gift to his employer immediately. Investigators suspect the payment was intended to secure his favourable assessment of Versiculus’s renovation work at the Lithuanian Officers’ Club in Kaunas.

The charges concern Versiculus and Gudynas. Prosecutors and the Special Investigation Service say the evidence gives grounds to suspect that the alleged bribe was offered in exchange for favourable treatment when assessing work under a public procurement contract with the Ministry of National Defence. The contract is worth more than €1.287 million.

The Defence Ministry received a report about a possible bribe through its internal violations reporting channel last December. The employee himself notified the ministry’s corruption prevention and investigation unit.