2025-07-31
VILNIUS - Five years ago, Siena.lt received a grant for an investigation from Journalismfund Europe. The data uncovered in that process has led to more investigative reports and eventually to today's resignation of the current Lithuania's Prime Minister, Gintautas Paluckas.
What began as an investigation into the financial networks of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has evolved into one of the most significant political scandals in recent Lithuanian history, with the country’s Prime Minister now at the centre of an investigation.
In 2019, Journalismfund awarded Siena.lt, an unknown Lithuanian media outlet at the time, a grant under the European Cross-border grant programme to investigate Lukashenko's enablers operating within Lithuania. The investigation uncovered an unusual finding: an abandoned building in Lithuania where a single apartment had been used to register over 50 companies, several of which appeared to have direct links to the Belarusian regime.
The resulting exposé, published by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in 2020, had an immediate impact. Two of the oligarchs identified in the investigation and described as 'Lukashenko's wallets' were subsequently sanctioned by the European Union. One of them, Aliaksei Aleksin, was also sanctioned by the United States.
However, it was an unexpected finding made while analysing the original data that has now shaken Lithuania to its core. Buried within the same company registration records, journalists of Siena.lt recently uncovered links between two additional firms and Gintautas Paluckas, the country's Prime Minister since November 2024.
This chance discovery prompted five investigative reports, shedding light on the Prime Minister's business dealings with an anonymous offshore company in Cyprus and an unnamed entity that provided €180,000 in loans to the Prime Minister's business. It is reportedly claimed that these loans were never repaid.
The revelations have sparked an extraordinary public dispute between the Prime Minister and journalists of Siena.lt. The embattled leader has launched increasingly personal attacks on the media outlet, branding its journalists "scammers" and “onlyfans” and dismissing their work as part of the "attention economy". In a particularly memorable insult, the Prime Minister referred to the journalists as 'OnlyFans' (a reference to the subscription-based content platform).
Ultimately, the political pressure proved insurmountable. Today, the Prime Minister announced his resignation, marking a dramatic end to weeks of mounting scrutiny over his business dealings. This resignation is a significant victory for investigative journalism, demonstrating the tangible impact thorough reporting can have on political accountability.
The case highlights the unpredictable consequences that can arise years after the original publication of a dataset, even when a single grant is involved.
Image: Former PM Gintautas Paluckas, 2023. (c) Augustas Didzgalvis, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
