Lithuanian Supreme Court rejects bid to reopen MG Baltic corruption case

Lithuania’s Supreme Court has rejected convicted businessman Raimundas Kurlianskis’s request to reopen the MG Baltic political corruption case, LRT reports.

Kurlianskis’s lawyer, Giedrius Danėlius, based the request on a July 7 Constitutional Court ruling that found parts of the Intelligence Law unconstitutional. The provisions concerned the extension of covert information gathering and the storage, transfer and use of information.

The request argued that those provisions were directly relevant to how intelligence information used in Kurlianskis’s criminal case was obtained and passed on for use in the proceedings. The lawyer asked the Supreme Court to reopen the case and reassess whether the information had been obtained and used in line with constitutional requirements of legality, justification and proportionality.

The Supreme Court dismissed the request as unfounded. The criminal case will not be reopened, and the ruling is final and cannot be appealed.

Danėlius has previously said the Constitutional Court ruling did not itself overturn Kurlianskis’s conviction or automatically make evidence used in the case inadmissible. The Constitutional Court did not rule on Kurlianskis’s guilt or assess the specific evidence, he said.