Olekas calls searches of Nemunas Dawn members’ homes unpleasant

Seimas Speaker Juozas Olekas has called searches at the homes of members of the Nemunas Dawn political party an “unpleasant case” and said he would discuss the matter with Deputy Speaker Daiva Žebelienė, LRT reported.

“It is a very unpleasant case, and we can only regret that such searches are continuing. On the other hand, it seems to me that we will have an answer as to whether these people violated anything,” Olekas told reporters in the Seimas on Tuesday.

The Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed reports by BNS and the news website 15min that searches had been carried out at the homes of five of the party’s 11 board members and members of parliament: Robertas Puchovičius, Kęstutis Bilius, Žebelienė, Lina Šukytė-Korsakė and Tadas Sadauskis.

Olekas said he planned to speak with Žebelienė, but stressed that the presumption of innocence had to be respected.

“A search can confirm a violation or a crime, but it can also clear a person. Let us wait and see how things develop,” he said.

Asked whether the decision to remove Nemunas Dawn from the ruling coalition now appeared more justified, Olekas said the Social Democrats would not have joined forces with the party if they had known the information currently available.

“Clearly, it would have been more correct from the outset if we had not joined forces with them,” the Seimas speaker said.

The Social Democrats decided at the beginning of the summer to replace Nemunas Dawn in the coalition with the Union of Democrats For Lithuania.

Domas Griškevičius, the first deputy speaker and a representative of the Union of Democrats For Lithuania, said the searches could harm the Seimas’s reputation and public trust in the institution.

“This does not add to confidence in our institution, which, unfortunately, cannot boast high levels of public trust as it is,” Griškevičius told reporters.

He said the future of Žebelienė’s work on the Seimas board was an open question that would have to be discussed by the board. He also said Nemunas Dawn itself would need to address the issue.

The searches were carried out as part of a pre-trial investigation into the circumstances surrounding car rentals for the Nemunas Dawn party, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office.

Asta Skaisgirytė, chief adviser to President Gitanas Nausėda, said the Special Investigation Service probably had sufficient grounds for carrying out the searches.

“It is very difficult to assess the situation when we have only just learned about these events. We believe that if the Special Investigation Service is conducting the searches, it probably has sufficient grounds to do so,” Skaisgirytė told Žinių radijas.