VILNIUS — Two top Lithuanian government officials resigned Monday from the Secret Service and the State Social Insurance Fund (SoDra) with black clouds over their reputations.

Lithuania’s chief of the State Security Department, Povilas Malakauskas, submitted his resignation on Monday, allegedly due to an investigation by the Seimas as to whether the country allowed a secret CIA prison to house terror suspects. Mindaugas Mikaila, the chairman of the board of SoDra, submitted his resignation after the Seimas voted last week to substantially cut funding for entitlement programs. Both resignations are a victory for the Grybauskaitė administration.

Malakauskas, who has headed the department for two and a half years, submitted his resignation to President Dalia Grybauskaitė during a Monday morning meeting. An adviser to the president, who is not authorized to officially comment to the press, told Baltic Reports that Grybauskaitė accepted his resignation, but did not know if the CIA prisons were discussed. The Seimas confirmed his resignation Tuesday evening.

Malakauskas is being investigated by a parliamentary probe Lithuania’s alleged hosting of the CIA prisons in 2004 to 2005. Although there have been no official allegations made because of the probe, Arvydas Anušauskas, the head of the Seimas’ national security and defense committee, told the Lithuanian news portal Alfa.lt on Monday that Malakauskas had been “ambiguous” in his answers on the prison.

“If the responses we had requested had been presented to us on time and more thoroughly, there probably would have been no need to hold an investigation,” Anusauskas said.
The State Security Department, abbreviated as the VSD, declined to comment on the issue. Malakauskas said he resigned for personal reasons.

Despite the controversy around Malakauskas’s department, government reactions were neutral to his leaving. Linas Balsys, spokesman for the President, told Baltic Reports that Malakauskas had a good relationship with the President, and despite criticisms of the intelligence agency earlier this year, they were not directed at him.

“There was no tension, professionally and on the human level,” he said. “It was very, very much a constructive and working relationship.”

However, the president’s earlier rhetoric was not so cordial. As late as September, Grybauskaitė has said that the VSD needs to implement “strategic change” in order to depoliticize the security institutions. Last year, Grybauskaitė turned the absence of twelve analytical documents from the intelligence community into a campaign issue because they supposedly detailed high-level corruption, but so far the VSD has failed to produce those documents for the Seimas.

Mikaila’s resignation from SoDra was received with open relief by the government. Officials told Baltic Reports that he had been inefficient and wasteful during his tenure.

“The president is glad he resigned because he was not working satisfactorily. She welcomed his resignation,” Balsys said.

Last year, Mikaila purchased 3.9 million litai (€1.1 million) worth of computers, violating public procurement rules.

Prime Minister Andrius Kublilius, who crusaded to cut entitlements spending in the Seimas to avoid a larger budget deficit, also welcomed his leaving.

“Changes like this, to my mind, are beneficial,” Kubilius said in a statement released to Baltic Reports. “We need fresh thoughts, ideas. Problems encountered by SoDra are known. Concerns were raised in public with regard to lack of transparency in public procurement. That is also being examined. I believe that we shall start the new year with effective changes in the SoDra system.”