LRT council weighs director’s dismissal over undisclosed service providers

LRT, Lithuania’s national broadcaster, will decide on September 22 whether to find its director general, Monika Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė, responsible for a violation involving undisclosed information about people from whom the institution bought services, LRT reported.

The issue was placed on the agenda for the council’s meeting after the Prosecutor General’s Office found this summer that LRT had violated the principles of institutional operation and accountability, as well as the public’s and state’s right to know how public funds are used, LRT council chairman Mindaugas Jurkynas told BNS.

According to Jurkynas, prosecutors also found that the failure to disclose the information restricted the ability to identify providers receiving benefits from the state budget and their links to LRT.

Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė’s lawyer, Tomas Bagdanskis, said the prosecutors’ findings did not in themselves establish that the director general was responsible. He also argued that the council was not complying with the deadlines set by labour law for recognising a workplace violation.

Jurkynas said the process had taken time because Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė was on holiday after the prosecutor’s findings were announced, and the council then waited for her explanation.

“She has now submitted her explanation, and we will consider the consequences of the violations identified by the Prosecutor General’s Office and who is responsible for them,” Jurkynas told BNS.

The council will decide whether a violation occurred and, if so, whether it was serious. The issue will be considered in a closed session.

Earlier this year, Lithuania’s parliament adopted new rules on dismissing the head of LRT, allowing the director general to be dismissed if a serious breach of duties is established.

“The council, which performs a supervisory function, cannot fail to respond to a violation identified by the Prosecutor General’s Office. Otherwise, we would not be carrying out our function,” Jurkynas said.

Bagdanskis said a finding that the director general had committed a violation would be unlawful, arguing that it was unfounded and that the required labour-law deadlines had not been followed.

He said prosecutors had not assigned responsibility for the violations specifically to Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė. Organisational shortcomings, he argued, did not necessarily amount to shortcomings by the head of the organisation because responsibilities had been delegated within LRT.

Bagdanskis also said Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė had consulted specialists over the decision not to disclose the service providers’ names, and that the LRT council had agreed with that approach.

He said the council had taken the position in April that the names did not need to be made public, but had since changed its position and was now addressing the issue in September. He argued that the council should have recognised the alleged violation within one month of discovering it.

Although workplace violations cannot generally be challenged in court before they result in dismissal, Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė is considering legal action because the council’s conduct is damaging her reputation and creating conditions for pressure, her lawyer said.

If the violation is found to be non-serious but is repeated within one year, the LRT director general could be dismissed.