"Attempts to mix a lot of things, look for various reasons, evil-minded intentions are making a muddle of this story. The fact is that Lithuania was confronted with treason, an information leak and million-worth damage done to Snoras depositors and Lithuania," Udrėnas said in an interview for the Žinių Radijas (News Radio) on Tuesday.
"Prosecutors who, as we know, launched a pre-trial investigation, will have to give answers as to whether a crime was committed and a secret was revealed, and who did this," he added.
The Prosecutor General's Office opened a pre-trial investigation into a leak of information about bank Snoras on Monday. Prosecutors say it was done only now because they had been waiting for additional information from the State Security Department.
Immediately before Snoras' nationalization last November, the daily Lietuvos Rytas cited anonymous sources claiming that “the Prosecutor General's Office has already issued warrants for searching one of the banks and homes of its owners.“ Back then, the daily did not specify which bank it was reffering to, noting only that it was a "Lithuanian bank."
Snoras owned more than third of Lietuvos Rytas' shares.
Two former chiefs of the Financial Crime Investigation Service, Vitalijus Gailius and Vytautas Grižadas, categorically deny leaking the information about the planned actions.
Last week, the interior minister revoked Gailius and Giržadas' accesses to classified information and later sacked them. The steps were taken in response to a proposal from the State Security Department.
Activists demand Interiour Minister's resignation
A group of public activists are staged a rally outside the Presidential Palace on Wednesday, demanding that the two sacked Financial Crime Investigation Service chiefs, Vitalijus Gailius and Vytautas Giržadas, be reinstated and the Minister of Internal Affairs Raimundas Palaitis hand in his resignation.
"We demand immediate reinstatement of the FCIS chiefs who were dismissed without clear reasons. These officials must be reinstated until the authorities provide reasons. We demand that Minister of Internal Affairs Palaitis resign. For the last three weeks, the man has been revealing classified information on polygraph testing, and yesterday we found out that this man, who has waged an information war with the statutory officials, "has nothing to do with it". So why do we need a minister who "has nothing to do with it"? A free Lithuania surely does not need such officials who "have nothing to do with it"," Darius Kuolys, director of the Civic Society Institute, said at a press conference at the Parliament on Tuesday.
The group demanding Palaitis' resignation and reinstatement of Gailius and Giržadas includes members of the Sąjudis (Reform Movement) Initiative Group, signatories to the 11 March Act of the Restoration of Lithuania's Independence, members of the United Democratic Movement and representatives of other NGOs.
Bronislavas Genzelis, a signatory to the 11 March Act, and member of the Sąjudis Initiative Group, criticized President Dalia Grybauskaitė and doubted if she had truly read the Constitution. He also said the President was "on the wrong side."
"The president keeps screaming that the world is corrupt, but we see that the president is on the wrong side," Genzelis said. In his opinion, the FCIS chiefs worked well. He also criticized the President's decision to appoint an official from the State Border Guard Service as acting head of the FCIS.
"To select an officer from the institution that is not famous for its good work. I don’t know if it’s an absolute lack of information or something even worse – (attempts) to discredit the State of Lithuania, to prove that Lithuania cannot be free," Genzelis said.
"The President should be the guarantor of laws, while she absolutely disregards the Constitution. So the question arises if she has read the Constitution," Genzelis said.
