The Minister of Finance Gintarė Skaistė transferred a part of the received payments to the Kaunas municipality - EUR 14,000

 

This is only a fifth (see below) of her wasted funds in this workplace alone. In total, she wasted 14 X 3 on personal matters, which is 42 thousand euros. This is Eligijus Masiulis level money. Such a thief is entrusted with our finances.

 

     "Finance Minister Gintarė Skaistė claims that she has transferred almost EUR 14,000 back to Kaunas municipality - part of the amount she received as benefits while working in the city council.

 

     She assures that during her work in the municipality, she used all the funds transparently, but she can no longer justify her expenses with checks for this amount.

 

     "The total transferred amount is EUR 13,992. Have I misappropriated this amount? No. It's just that today I no longer have paper evidence, so I'm transferring these funds to Kaunas City Municipality," the minister said in a post on Facebook on Monday.

 

     Like the Ministers of Education and Culture Jurgita Šiugždinienė and Simonas Kairys, she recently received questions about whether she transparently used benefits received while working in the Kaunas Municipal Council.

 

     J. Šiugždinienė used EUR 13,800 in 2019-2020, S. Kairys used EUR 35,100 in six and a half years, G. Skaistė used EUR 20,400 in about four years.

 

     "I spent the weekend analyzing bank statements and reviewing data from my last 2015-2016 municipal council term. I calculated that the amount of justified expenses that would correspond to the possible categories of expenses provided for in the council's regulation (transport, mail, communications, stationery) is 77.38% of the funds transferred to me during that period for the activities of a council member," said G. Skaistė.

 

     According to her, most of the expenses are for the purchase of fuel and postal services.

 

     "I don't have proof of the rest, which was paid in cash, because I didn't save the settlement checks from 7-8 years ago. Realizing that I cannot justify part of my expenses at the time without evidence, I decided to transfer that amount to the Kaunas City Municipality," said the minister.

 

     "I also thought about my work in the council during the previous two terms. I served as a member of the Kaunas Municipal Council from 2007 to 2016 - 9.5 years. I do not have detailed information about the changed bank accounts and cards. However, it is likely that during the previous terms of office, the expenses of specific categories visible in the bank statements would constitute a similar part of the amount transferred from the municipality to carry out activities. 

 

Therefore, I transfer to the municipality 30% of the payments received for the activities of a member of the municipal council for the years 2007-2016", she added.

 

     G. Skaistė said that she felt responsible for the fact that at that time she did not critically assess the existing procedure for paying for expenses.

 

     "I apologize to all the people who were disappointed by the situation. I hope that the Seimas will bring full transparency and clarity to this system in the near future," the politician said in the recording.

 

     The regulation of the Kaunas City Municipal Council does not require politicians to submit checks to whom they specifically paid advance payments.

 

     Gabrielius Landsbergis, the leader of the ruling Union of the Fatherland-Lithuanian Christian Democrats (TS-LKD), stated that this is not a matter of a few ministers, because most politicians, including those working in the Seimas, do not meet the standards of transparency.

 

     As a result, the presidium of TS-LKD, in order to solve the political crisis caused by the non-transparent use of funds by self-government politicians, proposed last week to initiate the announcement of early Seimas elections. If this is not done, Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė promises to step down, which means the collapse of the entire Government."