Kaunas court rejects Vytautas Gapšys appeal for parole

Kaunas Regional Court has again rejected former MP Vytautas Gapšys’s appeal over a decision denying him parole, LRT reported. The ruling was confirmed to BNS by Giedrius Endriukaitis, who chaired the three-judge panel hearing the case.

Gapšys had appealed a Kaunas District Court decision that refused to approve the Parole Commission’s recommendation to release him conditionally. He questioned the regional court’s practice of assigning parole cases to three-judge panels and said he would seek to have his case heard by another regional court. He also raised doubts about whether courts’ interpretation of parole rules was constitutional.

Gapšys has about a year and a half left to serve. He has been in prison since November 2023, when the Lithuanian Court of Appeal found him guilty. In October 2024, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction and sentenced him to four years and three months in prison.

He was convicted in a political corruption case for receiving a 12,100-euro discount on political advertising for the Labour Party and 15,000 euros in support for the Arts and Sports Projects institution after promising to carry out actions sought by businessman Raimondas Kurlianskis.

Former MP Eligijus Masiulis and Kurlianskis were also sentenced to prison in the MG Group political corruption case. Former MPs Šarūnas Gustainis and Gintaras Steponavičius, as well as the Liberal Movement, the Labour Party and MG Group, were also convicted. The three organisations were fined a total of about 1.8 million euros.