Security Forces Come To TUT.BY Offices, Editors’ Apartments
Several TUT.BY editors, including chief editor Marina Zolotova, have reported that employees of the DFR (Department of Financial Investigation) came to their apartments. Security forces also came to the offices of TUT.BY and Hoster.by. Later, it was reported that a criminal case was initiated against the officials of TUT BY MEDIA LLC on the grounds of a crime under Part 2 of Article 243 of the Criminal Code (evasion of taxes and fees on an especially large scale).
What we know so far
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Security forces came to TUT.BY and Hoster.by
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Several editors, including the editor-in-chief, reported that the DFR employees came to their apartments
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Employees who were at the TUT.BY office, including editors, do not answer their phones. The doors to the office are sealed with polyethene or painted over
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The DFR employees also came to TUT.BY regional offices
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DFR employees also came to the offices of other projects related to TUT.BY – hoster.by and av.by.
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State Control Committee: a criminal case has been initiated against officials of TUT BY MEDIA LLC on the grounds of a crime under Part 2 of Article 243 of the Criminal Code (evasion of taxes and fees on an especially large scale).
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In the house where TUT.BY editor-in-chief, Marina Zolotova, lives, the door to the common vestibule on her floor has been broken. Eyewitnesses say that it happened at about 10.20 am, there was a lot of noise and rumbling.
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The journalists and photographers who came to the TUT.BY office stopped answering their phones – Artem Mayorov (Belarusy i rynok), Daria Buryakina (TUT.BY), Alexander Chernukho (Onliner). Official representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Minsk City Executive Committee Natalya Ganusevich told Onliner that she has no information about the detention of Alexander Chernukho, as well as about other detentions at the TUT.BY office.
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TUT.BY website and its mirrors have been blocked. Mininform has restricted access to TUT.BY internet resources. The decision was taken on the basis of a notification from the General Prosecutor’s Office. The General Prosecutor’s Office has established numerous facts of violations of the law on the media.
These materials allegedly contain information on behalf of the unregistered BYSOL foundation.
“In accordance with Article 38 of the law on mass media, it is prohibited to disseminate information on behalf of organizations that have not undergone state registration in the mass media on internet resources,” the Ministry of Information added.
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• Volunteers write that the names of Director of Rocket Data Daria Danilova and Onliner.by journalist Alexander Chernukho appeared on the lists of detainees.• The apartment of TUT.BY journalist Elena Tolkacheva is being searched. The search order was approved by the Deputy Director of the Financial Investigations Department of the KGC, Colonel of the Financial Militia Prokopuk, and sanctioned by Prosecutor General Andrey Ivanovich Shved. During the investigation of the criminal case, “it was established that CEO of TUT BY Media LLC Chekina L.Yu., acting in a group with chief accountant of the said company Asad A.V. with the complicity of other persons, evaded taxes.”
We’ll update the news when more information becomes available.
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