The court also found the seizure of Narbutas’ property to be disproportionate.
In May this year, the Vilnius Regional Court acquitted Narbutas, who was accused of fraud and abuse in a criminal case probing the purchase of COVID-19 reagents.
The high-profile criminal investigation concerned the acquisition by the Lithuanian Government of more than 300,000 Covid-19 tests from a Spanish pharmaceutical company in March 2020. At the time, Narbutas was acting as an intermediary between the Health Ministry and the company, for which he was paid EUR 1 for every detection kit it sold as a result of his mediation.
The ECHR said that the Special Investigation service detained Narbutas in July 2020 in violation of the law.
“Article 140 (2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure allowed the law-enforcement authorities to place someone in provisional detention for up to 48 hours without a court order where, among other conditions, it was not possible to urgently obtain such an order. In Narbutas’ case, none of the domestic authorities or courts had provided an adequate explanation as to why obtaining a court order had not been possible in the circumstances. Moreover, Lithuanian law also required detention of any length to be necessary to prevent the suspect from fleeing or interfering with the proceedings, but the authorities had not addressed the relevant and pertinent arguments advanced by Narbutas by which he had challenged the necessity of the detention in his case,” the court’s decision reads.
“For those reasons, the provisional detention of Narbutas had not been in accordance with the law and had been in violation of his right to liberty and security,” the ECHR said.
The court also ruled that there was no reason for the Lithuanian authorities to disclose the identity of Narbutas after the notification of the ongoing pre-trial investigation into the purchase of COVID-19 reagents, as his notoriety had not been such as that of a politician or public official.
“Overall, the information issued and how it had been released by the investigating authorities had not been justified by the need to inform the public and had caused serious damage to Narbutas’ reputation. There had therefore been a violation of his right to respect for private life,” the ECHR said.
The court stated that the seizure of assets imposed on Narbutas – a ban on the use of bank accounts containing EUR 350,000 and the confiscation of his car – was not proportionate.
The European Court of Human Rights held that Lithuania was to pay the applicant EUR 768.94 in respect of pecuniary damage, and EUR 26,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.