In spite of impeached President Rolandas Paksas' call for his supporters to ruin their ballots in the presidential election, Central Electoral Committee Chairman Zenonas Vaigauskas reported that only about 3 percent of ballots were unreadable. The average proportion of spoiled ballots in Lithuanian elections is around 1.5 percent.
Paksas was fined 625 litas (181 euros) on June 10 by a Vilnius court for refusing to attend hearings on his role in the 1999 privatization of the Mazeikiu Nafta oil refinery. Paksas served as prime minister during part of the negotiations that eventually sold a controlling stake in the refinery to the American petroleum company Williams International.
As a result of Lithuanian initiative, the EU will send a group of legal experts to Georgia at some point this year to hold consultations with the Georgian government. The Lithuanian representative on the politics and security committee suggested the visit in February, which will be the EU's first crisis management mission east of the Union's new borders.
Foreign Minister Antanas Valionis showed ambassadors from EU states the first stretch of the fully demarcated border between Lithuania and Belarus on June 10. The 19.3 kilometers of border are only the first part of the entire 653-kilometer frontier earmarked to be demarcated by next year.
Prosecutors completed their pretrial investigation into Yuri Borisov (photo), Paksas' largest financial supporter in the 2003 presidential election. The prosecutors' case, which comprises 10 volumes of material and took seven months to compile, alleges that Borisov attempted to influence presidential decisions through bribery and manipulation. The case was passed on to the Vilnius District Court on June 14.
A report prepared by the Special Investigations Service with the help of Transparency International concluded that the highway police is the most corrupt organization in Lithuania. Almost one-half of those who reported having been stopped by a policeman admit to having given a bribe. Other public institutions implicated for corruption in the report included medical clinics and postsecondary education.
