The Lithuanian Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas has resigned overwhelmed by a corruption scandal. The Latvian social democratic leader, at the head of the tripartite coalition government, left after it was announced that it was investigated because a credit company in which it holds participations received a suspicious loan from 20 thousand euros from the National Investment Bank while it was already prime minister.
The old fine never paid
But the politician ended up in the eye of the cyclone, in the small Baltic town of about three million inhabitants, also because it was discovered that it is over ten years late in the payment of a fine of 16,500 euros to which he had been sentenced in 2012 for the abuse of authority. At the time he was an official of the Town Hall of Vilnius and had irregularly hired a disinfestation company.
Paluckas had just announced that he would have launched a vote of parliamentary trust following the various scandals that involved his past and commercial bonds. “To ensure the proper functioning of the government and the government coalition, I am firmly committed to testing political trust in the SIMAS,” said Paluckas in a statement by the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party.
“For several months, we have witnessed concentrated attacks by the opposition aimed at destabilizing the work of the government and overturning the current government,” the Prime Minister denounced himself, who settled at the end of last year. Regarding the accusations against him, Paluckas urged citizens to wait for the conclusions of the “competent institutions”.
Confidence
Yesterday the president Lithuanian Gitanas Nickea proposed that the premier undergoes a vote of confidence in the Seimas. “I believe that the investigations conducted by the police will provide answers to essential questions, but at the same time it is essential to know if he and this government still enjoy sufficient support in the SIMAS,” he added.
Paluckas, member of the Lietuvos SocialDemokratu Partija (LSPD), leads a coalition with the union of democrats for Lithuania (in the center) and Alba Nemunas (populist).
