Judicial Council backs removal of corruption-convicted judge Kažys

Lithuania’s Judicial Council has backed the removal of Court of Appeal judge Viktoras Kažys, convicted in a corruption case, recommending that President Gitanas Nausėda seek parliamentary approval, LRT reported.

All 13 council members attending Thursday’s meeting supported the recommendation. The council said Kažys should be dismissed for bringing the judge’s office into disrepute after the conviction took effect. The president appoints and dismisses Court of Appeal judges with the approval of the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament.

Kažys asked the council to delay its decision until the Supreme Court rules on the case. He said he planned to file an appeal and argued that dismissal could cause irreversible harm because there is no legal mechanism to reinstate a judge once dismissed.

A lower court in Kaunas had acquitted Kažys of bribery, but the Court of Appeal found him guilty in September and fined him €12,500. The court said a recorded conversation between Kažys and Drąsutis Zagreckas, who was exempted from criminal liability, concerned a confidential matter. It interpreted Kažys’s response, “I’ll have a look,” to Zagreckas’s unlawful request as a promise to accept a bribe.

President Nausėda suspended Kažys’s powers in February 2019, pending a final decision in the corruption investigation or criminal case. Other people convicted in the so-called judges’ corruption case include Supreme Court judge Egidijus Laužikas and Vilnius Regional Court judge Henrichas Jaglinskis. Druskininkai Mayor Ričardas Malinauskas was also found to have given a bribe through intermediaries in a civil case and has appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court.