“It shouldn’t,” the Prime Minister said in an interview with LNK News on Thursday, when asked if the Migration Department “will come out of this scandal completely dry.”
“We have discussed this with the (Internal Affairs – BNS) minister. The minister is currently conducting his own internal investigations and, as far as I know, has publicly expressed a very clear opinion that responsibility should be seen not only in the Migration Department, but also in the supervising institution,” she said.
On Thursday, the opposition factions of the parliament started collecting signatures in order to form a Seimas temporary commission of inquiry to investigate the theft of data from the Register Center.
According to opposition politicians, if the temporary commission does not receive a mandate, it would be considered to interpellate the responsible ministers.
I.Ruginienė states that the opposition is doing its job, but before anyone takes political responsibility, it is necessary to receive the answers of the investigations.
“An investigation is underway and that investigation will definitely answer all the questions, and if we see that someone deliberately did not do certain actions that they should have done, then, of course, the responsibility must be borne,” the politician assured.
“The opposition is doing its job. We can push the hot potato from hand to hand, but the important thing is to foresee the actions, what we have to do, how we have to protect not only the data of our residents, but also ensure security,” she said.
Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė, who spoke in the Seimas on Tuesday, said that the prosecutor’s office allowed the public to be informed about the data theft of the Registry Center at the beginning of May.
According to her, the company itself approached the prosecutors about such a possibility. However, information about the incident reached the public only at the end of the month.
The head of the government says she was not aware of such a permit.
“These circumstances were not really known to me. They became known only when I myself saw more revealed circumstances during the investigation and really assessed why I could not. But I can unequivocally say that this just proves once again that dismissing the head of the Registry Center was the right decision,” said I.Ruginienė.
The Prime Minister has previously said that, according to her, the Registry Center should have reported the data breach under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
As BNS wrote, the General Prosecutor’s Office is investigating possible illegal connections and more than 600,000 misappropriation of real estate registry records, including people’s personal identification codes.
According to law enforcement, logins were made through the accounts of employees of the Migration Department appropriated from abroad.
The first illegal logins and data leaks date back to the beginning of this year, the Registry Center became aware of this in early April, and the public was notified at the end of May.
