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  • Ezhednevnik editor Siarhei Satsuk detained and taken into custody

    The Belarusian portal Ezhednevnik (ej.by) is blocked. Its editor, investigative journalist Siarhei Satsuk, was searched and interrogated by the Investigative Committee.

    It has been reported to the Belarusian Association of Journalists that Siarhei Satsuk was taken into custody after interrogation in the old case of accepting a bribe. He will be placed in pre-trial detention center #1 in Minsk.

    The ej.by web­site can’t be accessed from Belarus or abroad.

    “A few days before, Ezhed­nevnik launched a project about Belaru­sian ter­ror­ists. Per­haps the new pres­sure on the por­tal is relat­ed to this. Or maybe it’s just his turn,” said Ali­ak­san­dr Sat­suk.

    On 25 March 2020, Siarhei Sat­suk was detained by offi­cers of the Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions Depart­ment of the State Con­trol Com­mit­tee of Belarus. The jour­nal­ist was sus­pect­ed of accept­ing a bribe.

    The nation­al tele­vi­sion showed the moment when the edi­tor-in-chief of the Ezhed­nevnik por­tal Siarhei Sat­suk took an enve­lope from Vik­tar Miadzved­s­ki, a med­ical deal­er.

    The TV pre­sen­ters claimed that a total of $5,000 had been trans­ferred, which was alleged­ly the pay­ment for inves­tiga­tive arti­cles to be pub­lished against Miadzvedski’s rivals.

    Sat­suk shared his view of the sit­u­a­tion with Nasha Niva.

    “He will now say that it was $5,000, I will claim it was just $100, believe it or not.

    But the sit­u­a­tion was as fol­lows: I was prepar­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into the sup­ply of med­ical items at inflat­ed prices and involv­ing fraud. Miadzved­s­ki helped me with infor­ma­tion. That’s all.

    Then his CEO wrote me on What­sApp: “How is it pro­gress­ing?” I explained that I lived out­side the city, and my car broke down at that time. Mobil­i­ty was a bit lim­it­ed, I couldn’t get there quick­ly and clar­i­fy some infor­ma­tion. Then she wrote that Miadzved­s­ki was will­ing to reim­burse expens­es, rent a car, repair and so on. I refused. I rent­ed a car myself.

    When we lat­er met in their office, Miadzved­s­ki told me that, as the CEO promised, they are ready to cov­er some costs. Why was I talk­ing about bit­coin? I said I didn’t want to know where and who the mon­ey came from: I sug­gest­ed they make a bit­coin trans­fer. Well, I thought, okay, let him cov­er the costs. I don’t even remem­ber how much was in the enve­lope – 100 rubles or 100 dol­lars. Some small amount.

    But if the whole record of the meet­ing had been shown, it would have been clear that we were not talk­ing about a com­mis­sioned arti­cle, because I warned that a new part of the inves­ti­ga­tion was being pre­pared, which would involve Miadzved­s­ki him­self. And that if we find trust­wor­thy facts of ille­gal actions – every­thing will go to press. Like, we can only warn a cou­ple of days before so he has time to go to an island and live there on his mon­ey.

    I was lat­er told that it was eas­i­er to “put a hit” on a jour­nal­ist than to go to the island, so we did not pub­lish the sec­ond part of the inves­ti­ga­tion, weigh­ing the risks. They threat­ened to kill me or get me in jail.

    I knew about this record for a cou­ple of months,” Sat­suk said.

    He also added that he “coor­di­nat­ed the men­tioned pub­li­ca­tion with a DFR colonel.”

    Siarhei Sat­suk is known as an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist. His lat­est high-pro­file inves­ti­ga­tion was into the sup­ply of the unreg­is­tered Eupen­ta vac­cine to Belarus at the time.

    In August 2019, Sat­suk told Bela­PAN that he had received threats because of his activ­i­ties.

    “After the pub­li­ca­tion of the first of two arti­cles on cor­rup­tion, which includ­ed Miadzved­s­ki, some­one came to me, I will not reveal his name yet. He told me blunt­ly that if I did not stop, I would either be banged or impris­oned,” Sat­suk said.

    On 23 March 2020, Siarhei Satsuk’s col­umn “Who fear-mon­gers on coro­n­avirus, the pres­i­dent or web­sites and social media?” was pub­lished on the Ezhed­nevnik web­site. In the arti­cle, the author ques­tioned the offi­cial sta­tis­tics on coro­n­avirus dis­ease in Belarus.

    Siarhei Sat­suk is a mem­ber of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists. He pre­vi­ous­ly worked as an edi­tor of the law, inci­dents and jour­nal­is­tic inves­ti­ga­tions depart­ment of the Belorusskaya delo­vaya gaze­ta.

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