LRT council members back public review of Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė case

Some members of the Lithuanian National Radio and Television (LRT) Council support publicly examining a possible breach of duty involving LRT Director General Monika Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė, LRT reported. The council is due to consider the matter on Tuesday, but will decide whether the discussion is public before the meeting begins.

LRT Council Chairman Mindaugas Jurkynas said the council must determine whether agenda items should be considered publicly or behind closed doors under its rules of procedure. The decision follows amendments to the LRT law.

Council member Liudvika Meškauskaitė said she personally supported a public discussion, but stressed that the discussion and the vote were separate matters. In her view, the discussion could be public, while the vote should not be.

Daiva Daugirdienė said she had already informed the council by email that she supported a public examination. However, she said she saw no grounds to find that Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė had breached her duties, pointing to a letter signed by Jurkynas concerning the non-disclosure of names and saying the director had done the same.

Council member Deimantas Jastramskis also supported a public discussion, saying the matter concerned transparency and the disclosure of information about certain LRT contracts. He added that the Prosecutor General’s Office had identified a breach but had not named the person responsible, so the council still needed to examine who was accountable.

Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė has asked the council to consider the matter publicly. She says the attempt to establish that she breached her duties is unlawful both procedurally and on its merits.

The Prosecutor General’s Office identified violations in June related to the failure to disclose data on individual service providers in publicly available LRT reports on programme purchases. In early July, the LRT Council unanimously instructed the administration to remedy the violations and explain their causes.

Amendments to the LRT law adopted by Parliament in June allow the public broadcaster’s director general to be dismissed before the end of their term by a majority of at least two-thirds of all council members if the director no longer meets the requirements for an impeccable reputation or commits a serious breach of duty. Most of the amendments will take effect in several years, but the new dismissal procedure came into force immediately after the legislation was signed.