MINSK, April 16 One of the defendants in the criminal case of tax evasion by a company that owned the previously popular but extremist in Belarus information Internet portal tut.by, Sergei Povalishev said that he and some other defendants in the case were pardoned.
«Every story has a beginning and an end. The other day in this story an end was put — we were pardoned. The petition was filed at the end of December,» Povalishev wrote on the social network.
In total, as Belarusian human rights activists report in their social networks, nine defendants in the case have been pardoned.
The news resource tut.by was one of the largest and most popular in Belarus, including actively covering the opposition protests that took place after the presidential elections in 2020. Earlier, the Ministry of Information of Belarus stated that access to the portal tut.by and its copies is limited in the country on the basis of a notification from the Prosecutor General's Office, which established numerous facts of violations of the republic's law on the media. A court in Belarus has recognized the media resource tut.by and its analogues in social networks and instant messengers as extremist. In June 2022, by a court decision, the Tut By Media company, which owned the portal, was recognized as an extremist organization, and its activities in the country were banned, and the company was liquidated.
In May 2021, the press service of the State Control Committee of Belarus reported that a criminal case had been initiated against officials of tut.by on tax evasion on an especially large scale. It was reported that, in particular, the company unreasonably took advantage of the benefits provided to residents of the High Technology Park. Initially, 15 people were detained, including those who were not employees of the company. Most of the defendants in the case were taken into custody as part of a criminal case on tax evasion. The Investigative Committee of Belarus also reported that it had opened a criminal case against a number of employees of the Tut by Media company for inciting hatred. Subsequently, most of the detainees were changed to a preventive measure not related to detention in a pre-trial detention center, but the former editor-in-chief Marina Zolotova and the company's general director Lyudmila Chekina remained in custody.
Last December, the Prosecutor General's Office of Belarus reported that the cases of five employees of the Tut By Media company had been submitted to court. The other nine defendants in the case, who were charged with complicity in tax evasion, fully admitted their guilt, compensated for the damage caused and petitioned the President of Belarus for exemption from criminal liability, then the prosecutor's office noted.
Minsk City Court in March sentenced Zolotova and Chekina to imprisonment for 12 years each. Three employees, who had previously been released from the pre-trial detention center on personal guarantee, did not appear in court and were put on the wanted list. According to human rights activists, they left the country.