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The borrowed state
“We will use the recovered money for party affairs. Anyway, we would have raised the budget for the elections,” Viktor Uspaskich, president of the “workers”, tells Kauno Diena.
The court ruled in 2007 and 2008 State subsidies allocated to “workers” but deducted during the investigation into political corruption return to the party at the best time, just before the Seimas elections.
Until others choose the euro for another, the “workers” will enrich themselves with 1,840,054 euros. “The Central Electoral Commission (CEC) submitted a payment request to the Ministry of Finance (MdF), according to which the DP must pay an amount of 1.84 million euros before July 22 of this year.”, – ” Kauno diena “was informed by the FM Communication Department.
True, July 30. V.Uspaskich himself will not be on the Seimas party’s election list to be announced. “The statute of our party since its creation says that the executive power should not be in the Seimas. And my objective is to be in the executive power”, Uspaskich promises to abandon the mandate of a member of the European Parliament. prime minister of the times. “
For the sake of accuracy, when V.Uspaskich talks about party formation, he probably means the 2003 Labor Party established by him, which was decommissioned as a legal entity in 2013 after the black accounting case reached the court, and registered as a new Labor party after merging with the Labor party. But three months later it merged with the Christian Party and renamed Labor. The newly registered parties did not want to take on the previous ruling, but they wanted to receive state subsidies for it.
It seems confusing, because it really is. Therefore, it is not surprising that litigation, including over government grants, has dragged on. The so-called black accounting of the DP and other related cases have continued to awaken political passions for several years. There was no shortage of them and the controversy over grants in the epilogue that lasted even two CEC meetings last week.
The court determined that the concession was not legally granted. Subsequently, we had no legal basis for not awarding grants. But an investigation was underway and the prosecution froze CCA grants in its accounts.
Inverse date
The fable in history of awarding state grants to DPs, depriving them, and now returning them to them is long and complicated. The Supreme Court has confirmed that in 2004-2006 DP kept black accounts. In DP’s official accounting records, € 7.4 million was not recorded in euros. 4.3 million euros in revenue. costs. However, the case did not reach court until almost a decade after these events, and the final verdicts came even later. The CCA could not rely solely on allegations of state subsidies. O DP 2004 m. He won the majority of the Seimas elections, up to 39 seats. in municipal elections – 111, so they were entitled to huge state subsidies by law.
Zenonas Vaigauskas, the then CCA president, says that after discovering that the law had been violated, the CCA did not award a DP grant for six months. The party complained to the CCA and had been litigating for two years. “The court recognized that the grant was not legally awarded. Later, we had no legal basis for not awarding the grants. But an investigation was conducted and the prosecution froze the grants awarded by the CEC in their accounts,” recalls Z Vaigauskas.
Thus, although the CCA in 2007 and 2008 DP allocated 1.8 million. In the case of the “black meter”, the courts suspended their payment and later returned the amounts to the budget.
2018 the “workers” requested the CCA to reimburse these grants. The Commission acknowledged that in 2004-2006, by providing false financial data, DP committed serious breaches of the law and retroactively amended the Commission’s previous subsidy decisions. Last year, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania (SACL) reversed the CEC’s decision, arguing that its decisions could not be changed retroactively. Accordingly, the CEC’s previous decisions on granting DP grants are valid and should be returned to the beneficiary.
“Accounting” discussions
The court’s decision is final and not subject to appeal, so no matter how strange it may sound to anyone, it remains to be enforced. However, there were a number of questions on how to do this. Therefore, although SACL decisions in two cases were made in April and October of last year, the money will reach the DP only on July 22 of this year.
Dissatisfied with the delay, DP complained in court, the defendant in these disputes was the Ministry of Finance (MoF). Finally, the Government on July 1. adopted a resolution “on the allocation of funds”. Taking into account the SACL in 2019. April 17 and October 23. decisions confirming the CEC’s decisions on the allocation of budget grants to the PO in 2007. April and September and 2008. In April, the CCA allocated 1,840,054 euros for grants from the state budget to the PO.
Discussions on how to implement the Government resolution took place in the CEC for several hours in two meetings on July 8 and 10. The meeting participants ironized that the atmosphere was so hot that after a couple of hours of disputes, even … a fire alarm went off and a technical break had to be taken.
The rapporteur for the meetings, Danguolė Jakštienė, Head of the CEC’s Finance Department, proposed a draft CEC decision, which would increase the estimate of allocations for political parties this year in line with the Government’s July 1. resolution. D.Jakštienė explained that these are accounting matters. Although there is a government resolution, a CCA decision is also needed for the Ministry of Finance to have a legal basis to transfer money from the DP. And last year, the CEC decided that all estimates must be considered and approved by CEC members.
However, according to CAC member Olga Kilkinova, the Government’s decision is a sufficient legal basis for the allocation of DP funds, a separate formal decision from the CEC is not required, and the President of the Commission, as manager of assignments, you can submit a request to the Ministry of Finance.
Laura Matjošaitytė said that due to almost 2 million such documents. You cannot sign alone, and if you do, you may end up in some buildings very close to the CCA headquarters in Seimas. Understand, perhaps in court, or perhaps symbolically, he was referring to Lukiškės prison, although it no longer works.
Commissioner Gražina Vickutė explained that CEC members confuse legal and accounting issues. It is not possible to send an FM request without adjusting the estimate. However, in his opinion, the protocol resolution proposed by the CEC should not indicate that it is a subsidy, but only mention the classification number of these costs. L. Matjošaitytė wondered: is it because someone knows, knows and others don’t?
Finally, such decision, by assigning the purpose of the funds only to the classification number, was adopted by consensus. L. Matjošaitytė did not offer to vote, although not everyone thought that the resolution should be like this.
Photo by K. Vanago / Fotobank
Grant but not grant
CEC member Aistė Žilinskienė says she was left unanswered questions even after the decision was made, and not about the procedures, but about the substance of the decision. If the court announced its decisions in April and October last year, why will millions be transferred now, just before the elections? Or another key issue: the government on July 1. The resolution makes it very clear that this is a DP grant, and by law, grants to parties are awarded twice a year in April and November. “Therefore, it would be equal and fair not to allocate money to the DP not now, before the Seimas elections, but during the next distribution of allocations to the parties provided by law, that is, in November,” A. is convinced. Žilinskienė.
A.Žilinskienė suggested postponing the CEC decision until at least until CEC lawyer Rokas Stabingis, who represented the Commission in court on the DP issue, returned and explained all the legal nuances. If almost eight months have passed since the court’s decision, a week here or there may not change substantially.
However, the CCA decided not to wait, and Lina Zubovienė, an attorney representing the DP present at the meeting, warned that if there was a delay in paying the specified amount, the state would also have to pay interest.
And, as you know, these courts cost taxpayers anyway. In April of last year alone, the defendant’s DP: The CCA was ordered to pay more than 1.2 thousand. EUR.
Upon returning to work on Monday, CCA attorney R. Stabingis explained to Kauno Diena that although the DP government’s resolution is called a grant, but the grant funds, which have been credited to the account of the party, are already legally part of the party’s funds. So since this amount was taken from DP, you have to return it in the same order. For the second time, the CEC cannot make the decision to award these grants once, so it is not a grant but rather one of accounting issues and there is no need to wait until November.
A true epic
Thus, the epic of DP black accounting, which lasted since 2006, ends. May, when a pre-trial investigation into the party began in 2004-2006. they kept black counters. Initially, accusations were made against several members of DP’s administrative and accounting staff, and later against DP as a legal entity. An international search was even announced to find the missing suspect V.Uspaskich, who was arrested in Moscow in 2007. He was arrested at the Vilnius airport the next day.
2008 In April, the criminal case was transferred to the Vilnius Regional Court. 2013 In July, he passed a verdict that convicted V.Uspaskich and three others, as well as DP, for fraudulent accounting and tax evasion. V.Uspaskich was sentenced to four years in prison, shorter to two more, and DP as a legal entity was terminated because the part was reorganized into another legal entity.
This sentence was appealed by both the convicted and the prosecutors. 2016 In February, the Court of Appeal reversed the verdict of the Vilnius Regional Court: the convicts were released and paid with fines. The court determined that the “workers” prosecuted had to be tried for trying to avoid paying taxes to the state budget, but already the spoons in the afternoon: the statute of limitations had expired.
2016 In December, the Supreme Court held that the reorganization of a legal person (political party) is not a reason for the non-application of criminal responsibility, but that the charges in the case have expired.
So the statute of limitations saved the DP and its characters. The lack of legal knowledge of state institutions and the slowness of Themis also contributed to the current situation. Although the Supreme Court has emphasized that political parties that have committed fundamental violations of the law cannot access state funds, such an act will happen today.
It is true that the most severe punishment for the party can be imposed by the voters. 2004 The “employees” had won 39 seats in the Seimas, in 2008, only eight; It increased again to 29, but in 2016 as a party it did not exceed 5 percent. threshold, and only two of its representatives entered the Seimas. Now the DP has returned to the head of its founder V.Uspaskich, and she rose to fourth place in the polls.
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