Irtautė Gutauskaitė,
ELTA
in 2023 May 25 15:25
The chairman of the Lithuanian Peasants and Greens Union (LVŽS), Ramūnas Karbauskis, reacted to the publicized information about the expenses of party members working in the Jonava district municipal council being based on 45 checks per month and paying with 47 cards. “Valstietis” claims that it has addressed the members of the Jonava department, asking them to provide “comprehensive information” about the funds paid to council members. According to R. Karbauskis, Gintaras Stašionis temporarily suspended his membership in the party.
“I react to such public information very seriously. I have already contacted the members of the Jonava department, asking them to provide comprehensive information on how the allowances paid to council members were used,” R. Karbauskis wrote on his Facebook account.
“If unpleasant suspicions are confirmed, the decision will be short and unequivocal. Neither I nor the party will tolerate abuse of the responsibilities entrusted to politicians by voters. And every initiative that makes self-government transparent, and all politics in general, is welcome and will be supported by me,” said the “peasant”.
R. Karbauskis said that so far he only has information about two politicians who were discussed in detail by publicist Andrias Tapinas, Arvydas Gasis and Gintaras Stašionis.
“At the moment, I have answers for two politicians: the chairman of the party’s Jonava branch, Arvydas Gasys, is turning to the prosecutor’s office himself, asking to determine who possibly falsified his reports, because some of the submitted documents supposedly justifying the expenses – fuel receipts, as Arvydas himself informed me, have nothing to do with he did not provide them to the politician himself and to the municipal accounting office,” the politician wrote on Facebook.
“Regarding the former candidate for mayor of Jonava, Gintaras Stašionis. He made a decision to temporarily suspend his membership in the party until the competent authorities determine and find out whether the politician is at fault or not,” added R. Karbauskis.
On Thursday, publicist A. Tapinas, who reviewed the stationery expense reports and checks of Jonava district municipal council members, announced that G. Stašionis, a member of the list of the Lithuanian Peasants and Greens Union, “improved the Lithuanian record” by paying with 47 different payment cards. Another representative of the “peasants” in the Jonava council, A. Gasys, refueled 45 times in a month.
The municipal council of the Jonava district announced on Thursday that at the second meeting of this term, a decision was made to temporarily suspend the payment of the activity allowances of the members of the municipal council.
Activity allowances for council members will not be paid from June 1.
Council members tasked the Council Regulation Commission to prepare proposals regarding the size, payment and settlement conditions of the municipal council member’s activity allowance and submit them to the council.
The Jonava council announced that it hopes that the Seimas, in turn, will initiate changes to the Law on Local Self-Government and will answer the question at the national level about the amount of benefits that members of municipal councils can receive, how they must use them and how they should account.
