Lithuanian court starts viewing video recordings in political corruption case

VLNIUS – Vilnius Regional Court is starting viewing video recordings submitted to court as part of the high-profile political corruption case. So far, the court has listened to sound recordings only.

A secretly-made video of a meeting between Gintaras Steponavicius and Raimondas Kurlianskis will be viewed by the court on Wednesday. The video's quality, just like the quality of sound recordings, is rather poor, it breaks at some point and only the sound is audible.

Three legal entities, including the Labor Party, the Liberal Movement and the MG Baltic business group, are charged in the political corruption case. Kurlianskis, a former vice president of the MG Baltic business group, is charged with bribing former lawmakers Eligijus Masiulis, Gustainis and Vytautas Gapsys. Steponavicius is also one of the defendants in the case.

Kurlianskis, however, told the court earlier the 90,000 euros he gave to Masiulis, the former leader of the Liberal Movement, was a loan, not a bribe.

Gustainis is suspected to have accepted a bribe of 8,700 euros, under disguise of support for a public organization, for favorable decisions regarding the Law on Consumer Credit. Gustainis strongly denied that and calls the accusations absurd.