TUT.BY Case. Day two. UPDATED

What hap­pened?

Yes­ter­day morn­ing, our col­leagues from TUT.BY began to report that police had come to their homes and office. On the floor of the apart­ment build­ing where the por­tal’s chief edi­tor Mary­na Zolata­va lives, the han­dle of the front door was bro­ken, the police was search­ing her apart­ment. Soon we learned that the police were raid­ing the offices of Hoster.by and Av.by.  Then the Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tion Depart­ment of the Com­mit­tee for State Con­trol report­ed about a crim­i­nal case ini­ti­at­ed against OOO TUT BY Media staff for tax eva­sion. At 11 am, the jour­nal­ists who arrived at the site to report on the sit­u­a­tion stopped answer­ing their phones. A lit­tle lat­er, the search at Mary­na Zolatava’s was over and the police led her out of the build­ing through a back door. Human rights defend­ers report­ed, the wid­ow of TUT.BY’s founder Yury Ziss­er, Yulia Char­ni­auskaya, was in the emer­gency depart­ment of the hos­pi­tal under escort. Lat­er she was escort­ed out and her where­abouts have been unknown since. Late night, a num­ber of TUT.BY staff and oth­er jour­nal­ists were let go from the com­pa­ny’s office at the police premis­es, but ten of them have been kept in cus­tody.

What is the crim­i­nal case about and who was detained?

On May 18, the Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tion Depart­ment of the State Con­trol Com­mit­tee launched a crim­i­nal case against TUT.BY exec­u­tives. They probe into the crime under Part 2 of Arti­cle 243 of the Crim­i­nal Code (large-scale tax eva­sion).

An impres­sive num­ber of TUT.BY staff mem­bers were detained. By night­fall, some of them were released, and the list of the detained dropped to ten peo­ple.

At the moment, we know of the fol­low­ing peo­ple in cus­tody:

- edi­tor Vol­ha Loy­ka. She is in Akresti­na deten­tion cen­ter;
 — jour­nal­ist Ale­na Talk­a­cho­va. Akresti­na deten­tion cen­ter;
 — edi­tor-in-chief Mary­na Zolata­va;
 — CEO Liud­mi­la Chek­ina;
 — chief accoun­tant Anzhela Asad;
— devel­op­ers team lead Ala Lap­at­ka;
— deputy direc­tor Iry­na Rybal­ka;
Besides that, the police detained direc­tor of Hoster.by Siarhei Paval­ishau and Rock­et­Da­ta CEO Daria Danila­va.

Art­siom May­orau, a jour­nal­ist of Belaru­sians and the Mar­ket, was also found at Akrestsi­na deten­tion cen­ter. Noth­ing has been known about his where­abouts since 11 a.m. At 11, Onliner.by’s Alexan­der Char­nukha, Nasha Niva’s Daria Burak­i­na and Ale­na Dounar stopped respond­ing to calls and mes­sages. They were cov­er­ing the morn­ing events near TUT.BY’s office.

After some time, Ale­na Dounar was released, Alexan­der Char­nukha and Daria Burak­i­na called their fam­i­lies and col­leagues 13.5 hours lat­er and returned home.

Is any­one else still out of touch?

At night, Kiryll Val­oshyn, co-founder of TUT.BY and Hoster.by, said that he still did not know where some of his col­leagues were at the moment. He meant deputy chief accoun­tant Maria Novik and Yury Zis­ser’s wid­ow Yulia Char­ni­auskaya.

Her daugh­ter wrote on Face­book that she was nowhere to be found. She went miss­ing at 9: 30 am on May 18. Ear­li­er, human rights orga­ni­za­tions report­ed that Zis­ser’s wid­ow was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal under escort with a hyper­ten­sive cri­sis. No news fol­lowed.

What is hap­pen­ing with the web­site, and where can one access their news?

Yes­ter­day around 12 p.m. the domain of TUT.BY was blocked. Grad­u­al­ly, the resource became unavail­able to users of dif­fer­ent providers. Kiryll Val­oshyn con­firmed the infor­ma­tion about the block­ing.

«TUT.BY was thrown out of the High-Tech Park under today’s date. The domain is blocked. The crim­i­nal case is launched under Part 2 of Arti­cle 243 of the Crim­i­nal Code (tax eva­sion on a par­tic­u­lar­ly large scale). «As a result of the unjus­ti­fied use of state sup­port by Tut.By Media as a res­i­dent of the Hi-Tech Park, the state suf­fered dam­age on a par­tic­u­lar­ly large scale.» What???» — he wrote.

In addi­tion, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion pub­lished expla­na­tions regard­ing the block­ing: «Based on the noti­fi­ca­tion of the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion has decid­ed to restrict access to the Inter­net resource TUT.BY and its mir­rors.

The Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office has estab­lished numer­ous facts of vio­la­tions of the Law on Mass Media regard­ing the place­ment of pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion in a num­ber of pub­li­ca­tions. These mate­ri­als con­tain infor­ma­tion on behalf of an unreg­is­tered BYSOL foun­da­tion.

Arti­cle 38 of the Law on Mass Media pro­hibits mass media and Inter­net resources to dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion on behalf of orga­ni­za­tions that do not state reg­is­tra­tion in accor­dance with the estab­lished pro­ce­dure.»

The web­site of our col­leagues is not acces­si­ble, but read­ers can find their news in social media. Find them in their accounts: Face­book , Telegram, VKon­tak­te, Insta­gram.

Yulia Charniauskaya’s daughter: still no news about Yulia’s whereabouts

Euge­nia Char­ni­auskaya says on her Face­book page, she still does not know any­thing about the fate of her moth­er, Yulia Char­ni­auskaya: «We guess she might be in the KGB deten­tion cen­ter, but they don’t give any infor­ma­tion to her lawyer. They just said they could «pass on the infor­ma­tion» them­selves. i can’t reach any­one who has seen my moth­er in the last 24 hours. They have obvi­ous­ly signed some­thing and have no right to give any details and are very intim­i­dat­ed, because my grand­moth­er or I can­not get any­thing apart from «your mom is fine». We have no idea where she spent the night, or what the state of her health is.  My moth­er is dis­abled and has been suf­fer­ing from real­ly bad pain in her spine and legs for the last 10 years. She spends most of the day lying in bed, and also works in bed, with her lap­top, because it hurts too much to sit and walk. She also has seri­ous heart prob­lems, and accord­ing to eye­wit­ness­es, yes­ter­day she suf­fered a hyper­ten­sive cri­sis, after which she was tak­en to hos­pi­tal under escort. She was dis­charged under escort, too»

Euge­nia believes her moth­er «does not have any infor­ma­tion about the activ­i­ties of TUT.BY». She added that Yulia learned the news after it was pub­lished, just like her father (TUT.BY founder Yury Ziss­er) used to.

We called the KGB press ser­vice in an attempt to clar­i­fy infor­ma­tion about the where­abouts of Yulia Char­ni­auskaya. So far, no one picked up. We will pub­lish their com­ment as soon as we get it.

Police came to the apartment of Nasha Niva editor-in-chief Yahor Martsinovich

He learned that from his neigh­bors. They say, the police is going to storm the door — there is no one at home.

Minibus­es with tint­ed win­dows are on the watch near the apart­ment build­ing. Yahor’s wife Adaria Hushtyn is a jour­nal­ist of TUT.BY.

It is not yet known what caused the inter­est of the author­i­ties.

(to be updat­ed)