Security Forces Come To TUT.BY Offices, Editors’ Apartments

• Secu­ri­ty forces came to  TUT.BY and Hoster.by

• Sev­er­al edi­tors, includ­ing the edi­tor-in-chief, report­ed that the DFR employ­ees came to their apart­ments

• 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

• The DFR employ­ees also came to TUT.BY region­al offices

• DFR employ­ees also came to the offices of oth­er projects relat­ed to TUT.BY – hoster.by and av.by.

• 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).

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• • 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.

.