Lithuanian ex-minister to revise his complaint against intelligence body

VILNIUS - Raimondas Sukys, a former minister, lawmaker and Seimas ombudsman, has said he will revise a complaint he has filed with an administrative court against the State Security Department (VSD). 

Sukys is asking the Vilnius Regional Administrative Court to recognize as unlawful the intelligence agency's actions in handling and collecting certain information and submitting it to the Seimas Committee on National Security and Defense (CNSD) for its parliamentary investigation into unlawful influence by MG Baltic and other businesses on politicians. 

The former lawmaker will remove from his complaint the request that statements in the VSD report be refuted as untrue, because such a request is already being examined by the Vilnius district court. 

The administrative court on Wednesday decided to bring in the Prosecutor General's Office and the Seimas office as third parties in the proceedings. 

Sukys held a seat in the Seimas for two terms between 2000 and 2012. He served as interior minister in 2006 to 2007, as vice-speaker of the Seimas in 2008 to 2010, as health minister in 2010 to 2012, and as Seimas ombudsman in 2013 to 2018. 

Sukys was a member of the Liberal and Center Union. 

In its declassified report to the CNSD, the intelligence agency says, among other things, that MG Baltic considered backing Sukys as a possible candidate for the post of the speaker of the Seimas back in 2009.

Sukys says the officers who wrote the report distorted information.  

He also dismisses as untrue VSD's statements about the business group exerting influence on him while he served as health minister.  

MG Baltic has also taken VSD to court over its report.  The Liberal Movement and Elonas Satas, deputy chairman of Lithuania's Competition Council, have contested the intelligence agency's information, too.   

MG Baltic is also at the center of a political corruption trial involving Raimondas Kurlianskis, its former vice-president, and several politicians.  

All the accused deny any wrongdoing and say the investigation was biased.