Election Commission Finds Former Prime Minister Paluckas Did Not Violate Election Code

Lithuania’s Central Electoral Commission has rejected claims that former Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas seriously violated the Election Code by reporting his criminal record on his 2024 parliamentary candidacy form.

The commission said a Vilnius city district court’s 2010 order to suspend a two-year prison sentence for one year required Paluckas to compensate awarded damages as a court obligation, not as a criminal sanction. Paluckas told the commission that he paid the damages in installments, in 2014 and July 2025.

The Vilnius municipality confirmed the payments and said it could not identify the officials responsible for failing to enter Paluckas’s debt into its financial accounting system because the procedures for municipal receivables had not previously been regulated. The commission concluded that the fact Paluckas ran for parliament before paying the remaining damages did not show that he had failed to complete his sentence or that a criminal measure still applied to him at the time.

The Lithuanian Probation Service said Paluckas had been found guilty in May 2013, with the sentence suspended for one year and an obligation not to leave the country for more than seven days without permission. The Information and Communications Department told the commission that a person is no longer considered to have a criminal record once the designated suspension period has ended.

The investigation began in mid-May after an appeal from members of the Seimas, including conservatives and Liberal Eugenijus Gentvilas. They argued that Paluckas had answered “no” when asked whether he had an unfinished court-imposed sentence or Criminal Code measure, even though he paid the remaining financial damages only in 2025, while serving as a member of parliament. The opposition cited a Constitutional Court ruling from Feb. 6, 2025, and Election Code provisions on misstating information about the execution of a conviction. The commission nevertheless found no serious violation.