Lithuanian Court of Appeal under appeal of a prosecutor partially overturned an acquittal by the first-instance court and found guilty Rolandas Paksas, former Member of the European Parliament, and G.V., a head of one media group, for trading in influence.
The court sentenced R. Paksas to three-year prison sentence, postponing its execution for 2 years and 3 months. G.V. was fined 26.3 thousand euros.
A part of the judgment of the Vilnius Regional Court of 15 April 2020, in which entrepreneur A. J. Z. was acquitted for trading of influence, was left unchanged by the Court of Appeal.
Pre-trial investigation in this case was conducted by the officials of the Special Investigation Service, led by a prosecutor of the Organised Crime and Corruption Investigation Department of the General Prosecutor's Office.
In this criminal case, R. Paksas, the then leader of the political party "Order and Justice", was charged in 2015 with trading in influence under Article 226 (4) of the Criminal Code for agreeing to accept a bribe of 15 thousand euros. The court found that R. Paksas, taking advantage of his public position, promised to influence the officials of the Ministry of Environment and the State Territorial Planning and Construction Inspectorate that they, in the exercise of their powers, would carry out, as soon as possible and without creating procedural obstacles in the event of detected and eliminated violations, the procedures regarding completion of a construction of a supermarket of one retail branch in Prienai.
A bribe to R. Paksas was offered by G. V., the head of a media group, who acted in the interests of one retail chain and one construction company. G. V. had been charged with trading in influence under Article 226 (3) of the Criminal Code.
By making an appeal against the Vilnius Regional Court acquittal judgement of 15 April 2020, a prosecutor argued that the first-instance court, in making the acquittal, had applied incorrectly the provisions of a criminal law, had committed substantive procedural violations and had examined the case in a biased manner.
