A. Nemunaitis: Funds allocated to clubs must be monitored, not just when a scandal arises.

2026-06-25 13:24

A member of the Vilnius City Council, Aleksandras Nemunaitis, urges the municipality to more actively control the financial support allocated to sports clubs.

All of last week, there was discussion about the shocking findings of the "Žalgiris" audit - bonuses, strange purchases, missing assets, and other potentially irrational uses of funds. This confirmed my doubts, which I have regularly voiced publicly for several years, but... Where has the Vilnius City Municipality been all this time? Every year, the municipality allocates about 1.5 million euros of taxpayers' money to "Žalgiris".

This is not private sponsorship. These are public funds, therefore the municipality not only has to allocate them but also ensure that they are used transparently and rationally. For three years, I have requested the municipality to provide information about "Žalgiris" funding and its use, but I have constantly encountered reluctance to provide all the data. Therefore, today, it is surprising not only the audit findings but also that almost no one has raised more serious questions about the municipality's control so far.

If the audit reveals so many questions about the club's financial management, it naturally raises questions about the municipality's control itself. Were inspections conducted? Was it evaluated not just whether reports were submitted but also how public funds were actually managed?

After all, there was a representative of the VMS on the club’s board for a while. In my opinion, after such audit findings, it is not enough just to change the club's leadership. The Vilnius City Municipality must also take responsibility for its control mechanisms.

Therefore, the municipality should:

• conduct an internal official inspection regarding how more than 1.5 million euros of annual funding was controlled;

• publicly announce what inspections were conducted in the past year and what their findings were;

• review the entire funding control process for sports clubs so that public funds are monitored continuously in the future, not just when a scandal arises, " – wrote A. Nemunaitis on social media.