Gedgaudas Norkūnas, the public prosecutor, told the Vilnius Regional Court on Friday that he was revising the charge.
“Evidence in the case leads us to believe that Paksas and Vainauskas agreed that Vainauskas would give a bribe and Paksas would accept (the bribe) for the benefit of himself and for the benefit of the Order and Justice Party,” he said.
However, the party as a legal entity is not held criminally liable in the case, the prosecutor told BNS later.
Paksas said he was surprised at the prosecutor’s intention to revise the charge.
“They can’t prove a bribe to me, so they’ll try to prove a bribe to the party,” he told reporters after the hearing.
Prosecutors suspect that Paksas, who was then leader of the Order and Justice Party, in late August 2015 agreed to accept a 15,000-euro bribe from Vainauskas in exchange for pressing construction inspectors to authorize the opening of a new Norfa retail store in Prienai, a town in southern Lithuania.