Serbia to extradite Andrei Hniot to Belarus

The Supreme Court of Ser­bia has ruled in favor of extra­dit­ing direc­tor, jour­nal­ist, and founder of the Free Asso­ci­a­tion of Ath­letes Andrei Hniot to Belarus. As the activist him­self informed Zerka­lo, the court found no rea­sons to pre­vent his extra­di­tion. We found out how he assessed the court’s deci­sion and what he plans to do to avoid being extra­dit­ed to Belarus.

Andrei Hniot, 2022 year. Pho­to cour­tesy Andrei Hniot

«They want to extradite me»

The Supreme Court of Ser­bia has ruled that Andrei Hniot should be extra­dit­ed «to the judi­cial author­i­ties of Belarus for com­mit­ting a crim­i­nal offense in the case of tax eva­sion and delib­er­ate under­state­ment of paid tax­es, includ­ing enter­ing false data in the tax return, which result­ed in sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial loss, in accor­dance with Part 2 of Arti­cle 243 of the Crim­i­nal Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus”.

The inter­state agree­ment between Ser­bia and Belarus of Jan­u­ary 3, 2019, and the Law on Inter­na­tion­al Legal Assis­tance in Crim­i­nal Mat­ters are cit­ed in the court deci­sion as grounds for extra­di­tion.

Accord­ing to Andrei Hniot, the court found no grounds to pre­vent his extra­di­tion to Belarus.

“They want to extra­dite me, not imme­di­ate­ly, but this is a very bad deci­sion,” says the Belaru­sian. “We have three days to file a com­plaint with the court of appeal to stop this deci­sion. And if the appeals court accepts it, a hear­ing will be sched­uled to chal­lenge the deci­sion.”

Andrei Hniot says that he and his defense lawyers have already begun prepar­ing an appeal against the Ser­bian Supreme Court’s deci­sion. The direc­tor will remain under house arrest until the appeal is con­sid­ered and the deci­sion becomes final.

The case of Andrei Hniot

Andrej Hniot, 41, is a direc­tor of TV com­mer­cials and music videos and a jour­nal­ist. He was involved in video pro­duc­tion for the asso­ci­a­tion SOS.by, which is rec­og­nized as an «extrem­ist for­ma­tion» in Belarus. In May 2022, he won the Effie Awards Rus­sia com­pe­ti­tion. In 2016, marketing.by report­ed that Hniot is «one of the most famous and in-demand» Belaru­sian direc­tors. His client list includes well-known domes­tic brands such as MTS, Mark Formelle, Bul­bash, Oli­varia, Spar­tak, Bel­lakt, and World of Tanks.

Hniot was detained on Octo­ber 30, 2023, by the Ser­bian Bor­der Guard upon arrival in Bel­grade. He was sub­se­quent­ly hand­ed over to the police. The rea­son for deten­tion was the individual’s inclu­sion on the inter­na­tion­al want­ed list at the request of the Belaru­sian Inter­pol Bureau on Sep­tem­ber 21, 2023. The agency asked to extra­dite Hniot to Belarus for crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion.

In his home coun­try, Andrei Hniot is charged under Part 2 of Arti­cle 243 of the Crim­i­nal Code (tax eva­sion). Accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion, from Jan­u­ary 2012 to March 2019, he under­paid to the bud­get 300 thou­sand euros (about one mil­lion rubles at the exchange rate of the Nation­al Bank on March 12, 2024). The Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee’s rul­ing of Novem­ber 8, 2023, states that «act­ing togeth­er with anoth­er per­son, hav­ing a sin­gle inten­tion to evade pay­ment of income tax and VAT», in order to «min­i­mize tax pay­ments» of the com­pa­ny Uan­Fan­Par­ti­zan, the direc­tor alleged­ly reg­is­tered three addi­tion­al LLCs — Par­ti­zan Pro­duc­tion Group, Pro Film Ser­vice and Par­ti­zan Film Ser­vice.

Andrei Hniot’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and Inter­pol, lawyer Vadz­im Draz­dou, told Zerka­lo about this sit­u­a­tion:

“Of the legal enti­ties men­tioned in the inves­ti­ga­tion mate­ri­als, Andrei was the own­er and man­ag­er of only one com­pa­ny, the PUE Uan­Fan­Par­ti­zan (it was sub­se­quent­ly reor­ga­nized into an LLC fol­low­ing the sale). In two oth­er com­pa­nies, he was only a co-founder. The deci­sion to open two addi­tion­al com­pa­nies was made in con­sid­er­a­tion of diverse oper­a­tional require­ments of the busi­ness. The pro­duc­tion of com­mer­cials, TV series, and music videos are dif­fer­ent types of activ­i­ties that require dif­fer­ent spe­cial­ists and bud­gets, and there­fore sep­a­rate admin­is­tra­tion. Although they are for­mal­ly clas­si­fied under the same OKED (Gen­er­al Clas­si­fi­er of Eco­nom­ic Activ­i­ties) code, they are, in fact, dif­fer­ent busi­ness­es.

Accord­ing to Draz­dou, Hniot also empha­sized in his speech that he sold shares in Uan­Fan­Par­ti­zan and oth­er com­pa­nies in 2018. Fur­ther­more, the con­cept of crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty for «crush­ing busi­ness» in Belarus was intro­duced in 2019. In his com­ments to Zerka­lo, lawyer Mikhail Kiryliuk stressed that Andrei Hniot was not enti­tled to be charged under Arti­cle 243 of the Crim­i­nal Code.

There­fore, in court, the man not­ed that the crim­i­nal case was opened ille­gal­ly. The direc­tor him­self and his lawyers con­sid­er the case to be polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed.

The Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter report­ed that Inter­pol blocked Hniot’s data, hav­ing start­ed to ver­i­fy the grounds on which the Belaru­sian author­i­ties declared him want­ed. The direc­tor’s lawyer insists that the accused is being pros­e­cut­ed for polit­i­cal, not eco­nom­ic rea­sons, as they say in Min­sk.

On March 12, the Appeals Court in Bel­grade over­turned the deci­sion to extra­dite Hnjot to Belarus. The case was sent back for recon­sid­er­a­tion.

Dur­ing his stay in prison, his health dete­ri­o­rat­ed and he com­plained about the lack of med­ical care.