Ezhednevnik editor Siarhei Satsuk detained and taken into custody

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“A few days before, Ezhed­nevnik launched a project about Belaru­sian ter­ror­ists. Per­haps the new pres­sure on the por­tal is relat­ed to this. Or maybe it’s just his turn,” said Ali­ak­san­dr Sat­suk.

On 25 March 2020, Siarhei Sat­suk was detained by offi­cers of the Finan­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions Depart­ment of the State Con­trol Com­mit­tee of Belarus. The jour­nal­ist was sus­pect­ed of accept­ing a bribe.

The nation­al tele­vi­sion showed the moment when the edi­tor-in-chief of the Ezhed­nevnik por­tal Siarhei Sat­suk took an enve­lope from Vik­tar Miadzved­s­ki, a med­ical deal­er.

The TV pre­sen­ters claimed that a total of $5,000 had been trans­ferred, which was alleged­ly the pay­ment for inves­tiga­tive arti­cles to be pub­lished against Miadzvedski’s rivals.

Sat­suk shared his view of the sit­u­a­tion with Nasha Niva.

“He will now say that it was $5,000, I will claim it was just $100, believe it or not.

But the sit­u­a­tion was as fol­lows: I was prepar­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into the sup­ply of med­ical items at inflat­ed prices and involv­ing fraud. Miadzved­s­ki helped me with infor­ma­tion. That’s all.

Then his CEO wrote me on What­sApp: “How is it pro­gress­ing?” I explained that I lived out­side the city, and my car broke down at that time. Mobil­i­ty was a bit lim­it­ed, I couldn’t get there quick­ly and clar­i­fy some infor­ma­tion. Then she wrote that Miadzved­s­ki was will­ing to reim­burse expens­es, rent a car, repair and so on. I refused. I rent­ed a car myself.

When we lat­er met in their office, Miadzved­s­ki told me that, as the CEO promised, they are ready to cov­er some costs. Why was I talk­ing about bit­coin? I said I didn’t want to know where and who the mon­ey came from: I sug­gest­ed they make a bit­coin trans­fer. Well, I thought, okay, let him cov­er the costs. I don’t even remem­ber how much was in the enve­lope – 100 rubles or 100 dol­lars. Some small amount.

But if the whole record of the meet­ing had been shown, it would have been clear that we were not talk­ing about a com­mis­sioned arti­cle, because I warned that a new part of the inves­ti­ga­tion was being pre­pared, which would involve Miadzved­s­ki him­self. And that if we find trust­wor­thy facts of ille­gal actions – every­thing will go to press. Like, we can only warn a cou­ple of days before so he has time to go to an island and live there on his mon­ey.

I was lat­er told that it was eas­i­er to “put a hit” on a jour­nal­ist than to go to the island, so we did not pub­lish the sec­ond part of the inves­ti­ga­tion, weigh­ing the risks. They threat­ened to kill me or get me in jail.

I knew about this record for a cou­ple of months,” Sat­suk said.

He also added that he “coor­di­nat­ed the men­tioned pub­li­ca­tion with a DFR colonel.”

Siarhei Sat­suk is known as an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist. His lat­est high-pro­file inves­ti­ga­tion was into the sup­ply of the unreg­is­tered Eupen­ta vac­cine to Belarus at the time.

In August 2019, Sat­suk told Bela­PAN that he had received threats because of his activ­i­ties.

“After the pub­li­ca­tion of the first of two arti­cles on cor­rup­tion, which includ­ed Miadzved­s­ki, some­one came to me, I will not reveal his name yet. He told me blunt­ly that if I did not stop, I would either be banged or impris­oned,” Sat­suk said.

On 23 March 2020, Siarhei Satsuk’s col­umn “Who fear-mon­gers on coro­n­avirus, the pres­i­dent or web­sites and social media?” was pub­lished on the Ezhed­nevnik web­site. In the arti­cle, the author ques­tioned the offi­cial sta­tis­tics on coro­n­avirus dis­ease in Belarus.

Siarhei Sat­suk is a mem­ber of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists. He pre­vi­ous­ly worked as an edi­tor of the law, inci­dents and jour­nal­is­tic inves­ti­ga­tions depart­ment of the Belorusskaya delo­vaya gaze­ta.