Judicial ethics panel rejects Gapšys complaint

Lithuania’s Judicial Ethics and Discipline Commission has refused to examine a complaint by imprisoned former MP Vytautas Gapšys against a judge who issued an unfavourable ruling on his conditional release, LRT reported, citing ELTA.

“The commission informed V. Gapšys in writing that it had no grounds to accept the submission for examination. Therefore, there will be no public commission hearing,” Tomas Kavaliauskas, head of the Communications Division at the National Courts Administration, told ELTA.

In June, the Kaunas District Court in Kaišiadorys rejected Gapšys’s conditional release for the third time. He appealed to the Kaunas Regional Court, whose three-judge panel upheld his complaint because of procedural violations by the lower court. The ruling was annulled, and the question of Gapšys’s conditional release will be reconsidered by the district court in September.

The regional court said Gapšys had been informed about the prosecutor’s appeal only one day before the hearing, which was conducted in writing, and had not been given the opportunity to submit a response.

The Conditional Release Commission had previously supported Gapšys’s early release. It said he was serving an actual prison sentence for the first time and that his risk of reoffending was low. The commission also noted that, since 2024, he had worked as an assistant and provided consultations on business management and public relations, while offering free legal services at a crisis-management centre. He received a letter of appreciation for the voluntary work.

“There is no information that the convicted person is connected with a criminal subculture or supports criminal behaviour,” the commission’s documents said. It also found that Gapšys’s dynamic criminogenic factors were manageable and decided to apply conditional release.

Prosecutors at the Kaunas Regional Prosecutor’s Office appealed the commission’s decision, saying they disagreed with its assessment of Gapšys’s risk of repeated criminal behaviour. On June 11, the Kaunas District Court refused to approve the decision in favour of the former MP.

In his appeal to the Kaunas Regional Court, Gapšys asked for the conditional-release issue to be sent back to the district court for reconsideration. If that request was denied, he asked to be allowed to attend the hearing together with his defence lawyer.

Gapšys is serving his sentence at an open-type facility in Kaunas and returns to his family in Vilnius at weekends. If he is not granted conditional release, he will remain imprisoned until February 24, 2028. The Supreme Court sentenced him to four years and three months in prison.

In 2023, the Lithuanian Court of Appeal found that Raimondas Kurlianskis, then vice-president of the MG Baltic concern, had asked Gapšys to use his position and influence as an MP to affect other public officials. The case involved agreed unlawful remuneration, including a 12,100-euro discount on political advertising for the Labour Party and 15,000 euros in support for the public institution Arts and Sports Projects.

The Labour Party, the Liberal Movement, the MG Group concern, Kurlianskis and former MPs Eligijus Masiulis, Gintaras Steponavičius and Šarūnas Gustainis were also found guilty in the political corruption case.