Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė has ordered an investigation to see whether the purchase of a large quantity of Covid-19 vaccines at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, and the subsequent disposal of some of them without use, constituted a criminal offence.
The probe was launched on Tuesday under the Criminal Code’s articles on abuse of office and squandering of property, the Prosecutor General’s Office said.
The move comes after prosecutors refused to apply public interest measures in a public interest probe opened last December. They said in their decision that the circumstances established during the investigation should be “assessed in terms of possible criminal offences”.
According to the prosecutors, Lithuania purchased Covid-19 vaccines from five different manufacturers through centralised procurement procedures initiated and organised by the European Commission, with states agreeing in advance to buy a certain quantity of vaccines on a pro-rata basis, that is, proportionally to their populations.
Accordingly, Lithuania purchased over 11 million vaccine doses for more than 230 million euros, of which around 2.5 million doses were subsequently disposed of due to expiration and other reasons.
The estimated value of the destroyed vaccines is 46.5 million euros, the Prosecutor General’s office said in the press release.
The prosecutors refused to apply public interest measures because the vaccines were purchased and delivered under contracts concluded with the manufacturers by the European Commission under Belgian law, and because no other legal basis was found for initiating civil proceedings, it said.
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