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Jolita Gudelienė, representative of the Panevėžys court, told BNS that the court withdrew from the case so that the public would have no doubts about its impartiality.
“It is one thing that the president of the court knows Mayor R. Račkauskas personally, the second reason is that the judges are also part of the society of the city and due to the great attention in this case they may feel some indirect influence or receive evaluations unfounded of his work. case of the mayor, “said J. Gudelienė.
The jurisdiction of the case was later decided by the Lithuanian Court of Appeal, which referred it to the Vilnius Regional Court.
The representative of this court Lina Nemeikaitė BNS confirmed that this case the case was received in court this week, the first hearing has not yet been scheduled.
In mid-February, the Panevėžys Regional Prosecutor’s Office announced that it had completed the pre-trial investigation and referred the case to court, in which the mayor of the city, R. Račkauskas, was charged with a bribe agreed by the club’s director basketball Lietkabelis. .
Alvydas Bieliauskas, president of the Lietkabelis basketball club, has been charged in this case with influence peddling and illegal possession of ammunition.
According to the prosecutor’s office, during the pre-trial investigation data was collected that in spring 2019, while visiting A.Bieliauskas office in Vilnius, RMRačkauskas possibly requested the services of this Vilnius businessman, to cover the debt of public elections. committee that headed after the elections to the municipal councils and mayors. euros.
RMRačkauskas is suspected of having promised that various companies run by the Panevėžys city municipality will provide additional financial support to the Vilnius resident-run basketball club without already being allocated from the city budget.
It was also established in the case that RMRačkauskas could use his influence as mayor to include another businessman from Panevėžys to support him in the Business Council of the City of Panev ,žys, whose founder is the Municipality of Panevėžys.
“To this end, the regulations of said council were even modified and four members (including the aforementioned one from Panev dežys) from the organization that unites businessmen were delegated, as before,” the prosecution said at the time.
According to the police, shortly after this episode, the mayor held his birthday party in a cafe in Panevėžys, which was included in the business council, and then attended in 2019, when he waited with like-minded people for the results of the municipal elections. . It is believed that the premises and the food were delivered at nominal prices in both cases.
After the police announced the suspicions of R. Račkauskas, he was removed from his post last January. The court allowed him to return to work at the end of March last year.
R. Račkauskas himself denied the allegations and previously claimed that the municipality has been granting the same amount of support to Lietkabel for three years.
Alvydas Bieliauskas, president of Lietkabelis, has so far not commented on the suspicions of the security forces.
The pre-trial investigation in this case was led by officials from the Panevėžys Board of the Special Investigation Service, and the investigation was led by Dalia Markauskienė, Prosecutor of the Organized Crime and Corruption Investigation Division of the Regional Prosecutor’s Office of Panevėžys.
This is the second investigation in recent years related to possible corruption in Panevėžys: a criminal case in which RMRačkauskas is accused of abuse was opened in June 2019 by the Šiauliai Regional Court.
In this case, the mayor of Panevėžys is accused, through his adviser Gintarė Maskoliūnienė, of giving illegal instructions to municipal employees in order to convert the winner of the public and communication tenders organized by the municipality into the Lukrecijos reklama company related to the now deceased businessman. Marius Vaupš.
The Prosecutor’s Office also suspects that the prices of the services, the volumes of the services purchased and other details have been agreed in advance with M. Vaupšas. It is suspected that it has also been agreed in further cooperation that the municipality of the city of Panevėžys will continue to purchase consulting services from Lukrecijos reklamos.
This case was separated from a broader investigation into possible corruption in the municipality of Panevėžys started in June 2018, which ended last July after the prosecution evaluated the data collected by the Special Investigation Service.
R. Račkauskas was removed from his post from the beginning of the pre-trial investigation until the end of his term in March 2019.
