The parliament on Tuesday stripped MP Andrius Vyšniauskas of the ruling conservative Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD) of his legal immunity, clearing the way for law enforcement to bring formal suspicions against him in suspected fraudulent accounting of expenses.
The motion was passed in a vote of 97 to one with no abstentions.
The issue was put to vote during Tuesday’s extraordinary session at the request of Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė.
Under the Constitution, an MP cannot be prosecuted or have their liberty otherwise restricted without the prior consent of the parliament.
At least 71 votes in the 141-member Seimas are needed for stripping a parliamentarian of their immunity.
Law-enforcement officials suspect Vyšniauskas of fraud, abuse, and falsification of documents in accounting for expenses incurred by him while serving as a member of the municipal council in the southern town of Marijampolė.
“Evidence collected during the pre-trial investigation give us reasonable belief that when Andrius Vyšniauskas was a councillor in Marijampolė, the summaries of his expenses as and the documents confirming these expenses [...] include expenses incurred by other person s, which are not related to his activities as a councillor,” Grunskiene told lawmakers on Tuesday as she was asking them to lift Vyšniauskas’ legal immunity.
According to prosecutors, the politician may have unlawfully received 2,100 euros from the municipal budget.
Data from the Marijampolė Municipality show that he used a total of 5,120 euros allocated for his activities while serving as a councillor between 2019 and 2020.
Vyšniauskas has recently suspended his membership in TS-LKD and stepped down as head of the party’s political group in the parliament, Seimas. He also resigned from the parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs.
The MP was listed as number 11 on the TS-LKD candidate list for the October parliamentary elections, but the party’s election headquarters decided to remove him.
However, he will still run as a candidate in the Marijampolė single-member constituency.
Commenting on the case, Vyšniauskas said he was surprised by the timing of the probe.
“What surprises me? I am surprised by the process, as the prosecutor said: the case is formally opened on July 26, and it reaches the Seimas four working days later,” the politician told journalists after the vote that lifted his legal immunity.
“We all know that this is the week when candidates can still be pulled out of the election. The other thing is the haste. I think that if prosecutors had – as in many other cases – summoned me for simple questioning, we would have clarified many things and there would have been fewer remaining details,” he added.
The politician refrained from commenting on any details of the case, saying he was not familiar with the prosecutors’ evidence.
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