VRK proposes clearing Paluckas of election code violation

The Central Electoral Commission is being asked to find that former Prime Minister and Social Democrat Gintautas Paluckas did not commit a serious violation of the Electoral Code when he provided information about his criminal conviction in a 2024 parliamentary candidate questionnaire, LRT reported.

The commission is due to decide on the proposal at a meeting on Thursday.

The investigation began in May following an appeal by the opposition Homeland Union Lithuanian Christian Democrats faction. The conservatives claimed that Paluckas had knowingly provided incorrect information about serving his sentence and asked the commission to determine whether this constituted a serious violation that could lead parliament to consider terminating his mandate.

The commission’s draft decision states that the Probation Service returned Paluckas’ sentence enforcement case to the court in 2013, saying that enforcement was no longer possible because the deadline had expired. However, no separate court decision formally changing the status of his sentence enforcement was issued.

“The procedural inaction of state institutions cannot be grounds for retrospectively establishing an adverse criminal law status for a person that was not determined by a competent institution in accordance with the procedure established by law,” the draft says.

The commission is also being asked to find that Paluckas was not subject to restrictions on his right to stand for election in 2024 because of an uncompleted sentence, and that there are no grounds to claim he provided inaccurate information in the questionnaire.

Paluckas told the commission that the obligation to compensate damages awarded in response to a civil claim by the Vilnius municipal government and a criminal measure were two different legal concepts. He said the actual criminal measure was an obligation not to leave his place of residence for more than seven days, which he had always complied with.

In 2012, the Supreme Court of Lithuania found that Paluckas had abused his office by favouring a municipal company providing rodent control services while he was director of the Vilnius municipal administration. He received a two-year suspended prison sentence and was ordered to pay 16,500 euros in damages under a civil claim by the Vilnius municipal government.

Last year, Laisvės TV and the investigative journalism centre Siena reported that Paluckas had completed repayment of the damages in July 2025, transferring the remaining 4,900 euros. He had previously agreed with the municipality to make the payment by the end of 2015. Paluckas said he had forgotten to pay the damages, apologised and paid the accrued interest.

After reports about the unpaid damages, pre-trial investigations into his business activities and public questions about his involvement in companies and ties to certain businesspeople, Paluckas resigned as prime minister in July 2025. Last year, conservatives also attempted to initiate impeachment proceedings, alleging that he had handled the affairs of his companies Garnis and Emus while serving as a member of parliament and prime minister.