Appeal court upholds conviction of former judge Čekanauskas

Lithuania’s Court of Appeal on Wednesday rejected the appeal of former judge Gintaras Čekanauskas, who was convicted of influence peddling, LRT reported. The court also rejected the appeal of Giedrius Valatkevičius, who was convicted in the same case.

After reopening the case last November, the Vilnius Regional Court found Čekanauskas guilty and fined him 19,400 euros.

The same court had acquitted him in January last year, finding that no crime had been established. The Court of Appeal later overturned that decision because of judicial bias and sent the case back for a new trial.

The appeals court said the first-instance court had been biased because the presiding judge, Gintaras Dzedulionis, had been questioned as a witness in the wider judicial corruption case from which Čekanauskas’s case was separated.

According to the case file, Čekanauskas promised to influence a former colleague, a judge at the Kaunas Regional Court, so that the judge would issue a favourable decision in the criminal case against Valatkevičius. Valatkevičius and his lawyer planned to hand over a 15,000-euro bribe to influence the judge through personal connections.

In the retrial, the Vilnius Regional Court increased Valatkevičius’s sentence for seeking to influence the judge from two years in prison to six years and three months.

Čekanauskas was accused of accepting a bribe at the request of lawyer Drąsutis Zagreckas to influence the judge handling Valatkevičius’s case and ensure that he would not receive an actual prison sentence. The charge was based on testimony from Zagreckas, Čekanauskas’s former university classmate who cooperated with law enforcement.

The case was separated from a wider corruption case involving former senior judges, lawyers and other people accused of corruption offences. The Court of Appeal has completed its examination of that case, and its judgment was announced in recent days.