Social Democrats question whether PM should act as prosecutor’s spokesperson in data breach scandal

Lithuania’s ruling Social Democratic Party has criticised the prosecutor general’s office over delays in publicly disclosing a massive data breach at the Centre of Registers, questioning whether Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė should have been expected to act as the prosecutor’s spokesperson, LRT.lt reports.

Party leader Mindaugas Sinkevičius accused law enforcement of shifting blame onto the government for failing to inform the public sooner about the theft of over 600,000 property registry records, including personal identification numbers. The breach, linked to hacked Migration Department accounts, was known to authorities in early April but only disclosed on May 22.

“Now they’re trying to claim the prime minister and ministers didn’t inform anyone,” Sinkevičius wrote on social media. “But should the person who launched the investigation have informed the public or not? In high-profile cases, we usually see prosecutors and officials holding press conferences. So whose responsibility is this now? Should the prime minister have become the prosecutor general’s press secretary?”

President Gitanas Nausėda has also condemned the delayed disclosure, calling the incident a “national security scandal” and rejecting claims that prosecutorial restrictions justified the silence. “It’s truly unjustifiable that public notification came a month or two late,” he said after a State Defence Council meeting. Authorities initially downplayed the scale of the breach, he added, noting that its full extent only became clear by late April.

Opposition factions in the Seimas have initiated a parliamentary inquiry into the breach, leaving open the possibility of pursuing political accountability. Ruginienė and Economy Minister Aušrinė Armonaitė have stated they learned of the incident on April 3 but did not recognise its severity until later.