During a sting operation in Vilnius, 4 policemen were trapped: they stopped working like locusts to stop cars.

Although no road police patrol was captured at the scene of a possible crime, nor was the money seized as a bribe, officials from the Vilnius County Police Immunity Board and the Vilnius Regional Prosecutor’s Office carried out The pre-trial investigation said they had collected enough data. that both the police and the drivers had committed crimes, some bribed, others bribed.

According to the officials who conducted the investigation, the drivers admitted to giving bribes to the officials.

Mindaugas Ražanskas, a judge at the Vilnius City District Court, began to explain whether these accusations are justified this week.

The chiefs of patrol of the highway police team Arnas Valkiūnas, Tomas Mateikis, Donatas Jankauskas and Denisas Masalskis were charged with accepting a bribe.

Also sitting on the bench were Ruslan Ševčuk, Marjanas Voronkevičius and Tomas Trapikas, three drivers from the Atp grupė company that provides transport services. Joining them is Vytautas Brazulevič, the manager of this company, who admitted that he even left money in the cars to bribe the policemen.

Atp grupė, a company located in the Vilnius district, specializes in transporting heavy and oversized vehicles throughout Lithuania, and since part of customer orders had to be placed in Vilnius, drivers had to drive through the territory of the city. However, it was necessary to obtain special permits issued by the Vilnius City Municipal Administration, and their drivers did not have them, so it is suspected that they solved the problems by paying bribes to the police.

Giedrius Tarasevičius, a prosecutor at the Vilnius Regional Public Prosecutor’s Office, said in court that during the pre-trial investigation five cases had been identified in which bribes had been handed out to road police officers: 30 to 40 euros. For this money, the officials did not record any administrative offenses committed by the drivers of the transport company: for driving large vehicles without a permit, drivers could be fined from 140 to 300 euros. Responsible employees of the company were also threatened with responsibility: a fine of 600 to 1,150 euros is foreseen for the representative of the legal entity for this violation.

The processed police officers do not admit the charges against him and affirm that there is no evidence in the case to corroborate his guilt. It is true that so far they did not want to express their position in court; They stated that they would testify to the allegations only when more and more witnesses were questioned and material provided by prosecutors examined. Two officials, D. Jankauskas and A. Valkiūnas, have already resigned, while two others have been dismissed for the time being.

It is mentioned that the pre-trial investigation into possible bribery of police officers was initiated to investigate other possible criminal offenses; At that time, after eavesdropping on the telephone conversations of V. Brazulevičius, manager of Atp grupė, the officers learned that drivers with heavy vehicles were driving without special permits, bribes to policemen who do not formalize infractions.

Although only five cases of possible bribery of police officers have been identified, the system is believed to have been in operation for years, and officers are suspected of seeing Atp group trucks and dumping all the work and lobsters to stop heavy vehicles. And verify drivers’ documents. . It is unbelievable, but sometimes drivers would present to the traffic police permits issued by the Lithuanian Highway Administration to drive large or heavy vehicles on state roads, and officials who did not understand anything about those documents believed that the Driver’s documents were in order and did not violate road safety requirements.

Although he does not admit it, it seems that the idea of ​​bribing the police officers came from the manager of the transport company V. Brazulevičius, who left money in the trunks of the heavy vehicles of his vehicles controlled by the bribery of police officers. policeman.

Mr Brazulevičius does not deny that he left 100 euros in the trunks for the driver, but says that this money was used to solve problems. And here are some examples: paying to park a car, tow a truck, feed drivers, etc.

“I used to work as a driver, so I know very well how money made it easier to solve problems,” said V. Brazulevičius in court. “I have been working in this field for 10 years, they have provoked me many times to give a bribe, so it seemed normal to me, but now I realize that I am wrong.”

He admitted that he checked the trunks of the cars of his controlled drivers once a week and, if they no longer had money for “necessary expenses”, he would put back 100 euros.

The manager of the company assured that the money came out of his personal pocket and that the employers did not know anything about it. Some of the money, he did not hide, was recovered because the drivers provided proof of expenses, but others did not.

“The most important thing for me was that the drivers got to work as soon as possible, this money saved me a lot of time,” assured the processed manager of Atp Group.

He did not hide the fact that some drivers also use the money left in the trunk to bribe officials: the census. Of course, I could not check if the driver was telling the truth, if he was really giving a bribe or taking it for himself, but it was not relevant to me, I am a manager, I needed the car to drive. as quickly as possible and transport the cargo as quickly as possible. “

V. Brazulevičius assured that at that time he did not think he was committing a crime: “If I committed a crime, I did it, now that the court decides, but I want to forget this story as soon as possible – like everyone else, I want to sleep peacefully at night” .

“It was my personal money, but since there were not many cases, I did not suffer much, I do not have to earn much to put a few hundred euros in the trunk,” said the manager of the transport company. “Of course, drivers could pay with their own money, but as a rule, they never have the money.”

According to him, sometimes the money on the drivers’ cars went to bed after half a year, and sometimes the drivers didn’t even know that the truck they were driving had money to “solve problems.”

Prosecutor V. Brazulevičius did not immediately admit that he had spent money on bribes to police officers; He only spoke about it when he was questioned by an examining magistrate. While the meeting secretary drew up the minutes of the suspect’s interview, in which it was recorded that the manager did not know anything about the bribery of several police patrols, V. Brazulevičius called his friend and told him about the problem. This, he said, after hearing that the drivers had already admitted to giving bribes, he offered to stop lying and say what it’s like. The man did so – when the judge brought the record of the previous interrogation with the hearing clerk to read and sign, the suspect said he wanted to change his position and honestly tell how he had incited drivers to bribe officials.

In court, he also pointed out that this was done only because the company did not have special permits, which allowed heavy vehicles to circulate on the streets of Vilnius. However, since the company was visited by police officers, the order has changed: “Now we have all the necessary permits.”

V. Brazulevičius also admitted that he no longer works as a transport manager; He is currently responsible for the excavation work in the company.

“I got rumors from the managers because maybe six officers from the police and the Financial Crimes Investigation Service visited our company,” he explained.

However, such words from the manager of the transport company do not convince either the police accused of bribery or the lawyers who defend them; They doubt that the manager could have given his personal money to the drivers. Arūnas Marcinkevičius, a lawyer defending one of the officials, even stated that one should be interested not only in the assets and income of all the managers and shareholders of the company, but also in the drivers accused of bribery. According to the lawyer, at the time of the events before the court, the company owned between 13 and 25 vehicles, so the money for essential expenses could be deposited in the trunks of other heavy vehicles, but it is not clear for whom they were used. because he took them as if they weren’t on the case.

In other hearings, the court also plans to question drivers who confessed to giving bribes to the police officers who stopped them. Both the agents and the drivers, and the manager who instigated them, are presumed innocent until a court proves guilty.