BelaPAN editor-in-chief Iryna Leushyna and ex-director Dzmitry Navazhylau charged with “creating an extremist formation”

Bela­PAN edi­tor-in-chief Iry­na Leushy­na and ex-direc­tor of the agency Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau were accused of “cre­at­ing an extrem­ist group,” Radio Svabo­da reports.

At first, Iry­na Leushy­na and Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau were detained for “orga­niz­ing mass riots”. They were then accused of tax eva­sion. The new charge is “extrem­ism”.

“Cre­ation of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion” implies up to 7 years in prison.

On August 18, secu­ri­ty forces searched sev­er­al Bela­PAN jour­nal­ists. Edi­tor-in-chief Iry­na Leushy­na, accoun­tant Kat­siary­na Boye­va, and for­mer agency direc­tor Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau were detained. They are accused of com­mit­ting crimes under part 1 of Arti­cle 342 (“Orga­ni­za­tion and active par­tic­i­pa­tion in actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order”) of the Crim­i­nal Code of Belarus.

In addi­tion, dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion, a tax audit of the agency’s activ­i­ties was con­duct­ed and a vio­la­tion of tax leg­is­la­tion was revealed. Bela­PAN is accused of tax eva­sion with dam­age amount­ing to 30 thou­sand euros.

Direc­tor and edi­tor-in-chief Iry­na Leushy­na and for­mer direc­tor Dzmit­ry Navazhy­lau are cur­rent­ly in cus­tody as sus­pects, while accoun­tant Kat­siary­na Boye­va has been released on bail.

It is known that the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee start­ed a crim­i­nal case under Part 2 of Arti­cle 243 of the Crim­i­nal Code (tax eva­sion). In addi­tion, the accu­sa­tion includes jour­nal­ist Andrei Ali­ak­san­drau, a jour­nal­ist detained ear­li­er for alleged­ly financ­ing protests and trea­son, who had pre­vi­ous­ly pro­vid­ed con­sult­ing ser­vices to Bela­PAN.

The Bela­PAN news agency was found­ed in autumn 1991. The founder of the agency was a well-known Belaru­sian jour­nal­ist Ales Lipaj. The founder of Bela­PAN passed away in August 2018 as a result of a seri­ous ill­ness. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the last months of the journalist’s life were marred by pres­sure on the agency and him­self from the Belaru­sian author­i­ties. In June 2018, a crim­i­nal case was opened against him, they tried to accuse him of tax eva­sion, and in August the so-called “BelTA case” began – when the Belaru­sian media (Tut.by, Bela­PAN and oth­ers) were accused of “steal­ing” sub­scrip­tion logins to the state agency BelTA mate­ri­als.

This is the sec­ond media out­let to receive the sta­tus of an extrem­ist for­ma­tion. Ear­li­er, the Inter­net resources of the Belaru­sian-lan­guage Pol­ish TV chan­nel Bel­sat were put on the list.