Lithuania’s head of the Criminal Police Bureau Arūnas Maskoliūnas has confirmed that hundreds of thousands of records from national registries were stolen using accounts linked to the Migration Department.
“The information mentioned in the media regarding the Migration Department is true,” Maskoliūnas told reporters on Tuesday.
The confirmation comes amid an ongoing investigation by Lithuania’s Prosecutor General’s Office into unauthorised access to state-managed databases and the alleged leak of more than 600,000 records.
Meanwhile, Lithuania's Migration Department confirmed that not a single employee of has been suspended at the agency.
"No staff have been suspended at the Migration Department in connection with this incident. The pre-trial investigation is establishing the true role of the institution and its employees, and suspension from duties is not always a proportionate measure at this stage of an investigation," the department said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
The department said it was not in a position to comment further while the investigation was ongoing, but insisted it was cooperating with police and prosecutors "with maximum transparency."
Law enforcement officials said the breaches were carried out from a foreign state, using systems administered by other institutions. They did not identify the country or the organisations involved.
According to the Centre of Registers, the leaked information includes extracts from the Real Estate Register, including personal identification numbers and other sensitive data.
Authorities are continuing to investigate how access was obtained and whether additional systems may have been affected.
Updated: added Migration Department's comments.
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