15min / In Lithuania

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Friday
2013.05.24

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23 may 2013 / Liepa Želnienė /

Eurovision vote buyers were Ukrainian nationals, car rental records show

Two Russian-speaking men, who were caught on camera by 15min offering money for votes in the Eurovision Song Contest, came from Ukraine. According to sources, the two men arrived to Saturday's meeting in a car rented in Lithuania. Read more...

23 may 2013

Amnesty International reminds Lithuania about CIA prison probe and discrimination against LGBT

Nongovernmental organization Amnesty International has published its annual report on the situation of human rights in the world and criticized Lithuania for a lack of in-depth investigation into alleged CIA prisons in the country and the adoption of laws discriminating against sexual minorities or creating conditions for such discrimination. Read more...

22 may 2013

Suspicions of leaking Snoras information against deputy chief of Lithuania's FCIS dropped

Lithuania's Prosecutor General's Office has dropped suspicions of document forgery and jobbery against former deputy director of the country's Financial Crime Investigation Service, Vytautas Giržadas. Read more...

22 may 2013

Lithuanian news website comes under hacker attack after Eurovision vote buying article

Lithuanian news website delfi.lt has come under a hacker attack after it published an article on alleged attempts to rig televoting in the Eurovision Song Contest in favour of the Russian entry. Read more...

22 may 2013 / Liepa Želnienė / 2 /

Lithuanian student who helped uncover possible Eurovision vote rigging scheme: Within ten minutes I found six people ready to vote for money

Laurynas Juozas Liutkus, a second-year student at Klaipėda University, says he did not waver when two Russian-speaking men approached him near the White Bridge in Vilnius last Friday and offered to pay for voting in the Eurovision Song Contest. The student, who is doing a degree in journalism, realized at once it was some dirty business and resolved to look into it. On Saturday, he shared his the story with 15min. Read more...

22 may 2013 / 2 /

Eurovision organizers to investigate possible vote rigging in Lithuania

Sietse Bakker of the Eurovision Song Contest has informed 15min that organizers of the event will investigate a possible case of vote rigging in Lithuania. Read more...

21 may 2013

Cigarette smuggling into Lithuania near-doubled

Lithuanian Minister of the Interior Dailis Alfonsas Barakauskas says the amount of detained cigarette contraband in Lithuanian rose 87 percent in the first months of this year, compared to the same period last year. Read more...

20 may 2013

Vilnius prosecutors ask to revoke legal immunity of conservative MP suspected in domestic violence incident

Vilnius District Prosecutor's Office is asking Prosecutor General Darius Valys to turn to the Lithuanian Seimas in order to get MP Egidijus Vareikis stripped of his legal immunity. Read more...

20 may 2013 / Liepa ŽELNIENĖ, Saulius CHADASEVIČIUS / 7 /

Millions for victory: 15min investigates vote buying in Eurovision Song Contest

The 2013 Eurovision song contest can only be won with bought votes, allege two Russian-speaking men who, before the final concert on Saturday, were offering Lithuanians money to vote for the entry they work to promote. The two men drove in a white BMW to a meeting with 15min journalists and, five minutes into the conversation, presented a bundle of euro notes to show they meant business. The men were frank: they were doing this in fifteen different countries. And perhaps quite successfully – in Saturday's Eurovision finals, Lithuanian gave 12 points to the country they were promoting. Read more...

20 may 2013

20 individuals named suspects in January 13 case in Lithuania

Vilnius City District Court has satisfied a request by the Prosecutor General's Office and named 20 foreign nationals suspects in the January 13 case. Read more...

17 may 2013

Illegal international diesel trade group involved companies in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia

An international organized group, consisting of Lithuanian, Latvian, and Polish nationals and exposed by Lithuania’s law enforcement services, involved three Vilnius-based companies – Ervin, Viner, and Transoil. Read more...

16 may 2013

ILGA-Europe on LGBTI rights in Lithuania: While politicians' homophobic statements continue feeding intolerance, there are positive developments

ILGA-Europe, an LGBTI rights organization, has published its annual review of the situation of LGBTI rights in Europe, noting that while some countries are moving towards marriage equality, others have introduced discriminatory measures like criminalization of "homosexual propaganda". Read more...

16 may 2013

International smuggling scheme detected in Lithuania

Persons who were detained in Vilnius on Wednesday for allegedly illegal trade in oil products are linked to an international smuggling scheme that has been detected in Lithuania, Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius has said on Thursday. Read more...

16 may 2013 / 4

Vilnius police investigate Stalin portrait incident

Vilnius police are carrying out an investigation into an incident on May 9 when Valerij Ivanov, former leader of post-Soviet organization Yedinstvo, displayed a portrait of Stalin at Antakalnis Cemetery in Vilnius. Read more...

15 may 2013

Human trafficking takes new shape, Lithuanian prosecutor says

Human smuggling has lately been taking a new shape, according to prosecutor Arūnas Meška of the Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office. Not only are people sold to sex slavery, but more and more children are taken abroad to shoplift and adult men sold to forced labor. Read more...

15 may 2013

Vilnius court still expecting legal assistance from Ireland and UK in Real IRA arms smuggling case

After more than a year of adjournment in the Real IRA arms smuggling case, the Lithuanian Court of Appeals says it has not received legal assistance from institutions in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Read more...

14 may 2013 / 1 /

Lithuanian customs service busts biggest hash shipment in its history

A huge shipment of drugs was apprehended at the Lavoriškės checkpoint on the Lithuanian-Belarusian border. Read more...

14 may 2013

United Nations Development Program ends its work in Lithuania

The United Nations Development Program is ending its activities in Lithuania but hopes for wider cooperation in the future, Cihan Sultanoglu, the UNDP assistant administrator and director of the Regional Bureau for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, says. Read more...

13 may 2013 / 2

Jewish compensation fund receives 1,000 applications

A fund in charge of compensations for the Jewish property has received about 1,000 applications from Holocaust survivors. Read more...

10 may 2013 / Andrius Vaitkevičius / 1

Nine young Lithuanians, arrested for hanging anti-Soviet banner, might have been part of secret police operation

On Thursday, the police reported an arrest of nine youngsters for hanging an anti-Soviet banner from an overbridge in Vilnius. The public reaction was critical of the police, saying the law enforcement overreacted, but it is possible that the arrest was part of a much bigger operation. Sources tell 15min that the banner was just an excuse for detaining the youths in order to prevent “something much more serious that was being planned.” Read more...

9 may 2013 / 1

Lithuanian prosecutors call search for MP Neringa Venckienė

Prosecutors of Šiauliai, northern Lithuania, on Thursday called search for Neringa Venckienė, the leader of the Path of Courage parliamentary party. Read more...

9 may 2013

Lithuania facilitates citizenship rules for stateless persons

Stateless persons born in Lithuania will now be able to get Lithuanian citizenship easier after parliament adopted amendments to the Law on Citizenship and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Read more...

9 may 2013

Lithuanians to take exam on Europe

Lithuanians are invited to take an exam on Europe as the Europe Day is marked on Thursday. Read more...

8 may 2013

Belarus might transport equipment for Astravets NPP via Lithuania

Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius said on Wednesday that he had no information that cargos for Belarus' Astravets nuclear power plant could be transported via Lithuania, but promised to deal with the issue immediately. Read more...

8 may 2013

Liberal MEPs vow to keep close eye on Lithuanian LGBT pride

Liberal members of the European Parliament said the Lithuanian government assured them that the LGBT pride march planned for this July will be properly protected. However, they have pledges to keep a close eye on the situation. Read more...

7 may 2013

Lithuanian prosecutors ask court to name 20 individuals suspects in 1991 coup case

The Lithuanian Prosecutor General's Office has turned to a Vilnius court with a request to declare 20 foreign individuals suspects in the criminal investigation of the attempted coup of January 13, 1991. Read more...

7 may 2013

Conservative MP Egidijus Vareikis suspends party membership after assaulting his wife

Egidijus Vareikis, MP and a member of the Lithuanian opposition Homeland Union–Lithuanian Christian Democrats, who has recently assaulted his wife while drunk, had suspended his party membership for a year. Read more...

7 may 2013

Lithuania offers better child raising conditions than neighboring countries

Lithuania can offer better conditions for raising a child than neighboring Latvia, Poland, and Russia, the annual survey by Save the Children, which is published on Tuesday, shows. Read more...

6 may 2013 / 1 /

Lithuanian terrorism suspect Eglė Kusaitė rejects accusations in closing speech

Lithuanian terrorism suspect Eglė Kusaitė was allowed by Vilnius Regional Court to make her closing speech on Monday. Read more...

3 may 2013

Lithuania's Genocide and Resistance Research Centre publishes documents on KGB Mobilization Division

The Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania has published 349 new documents stored at Lithuania's Special Archives on activities of the KGB's mobilization division during the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. The documents were published on the website kgbveikla.lt. Read more...