Journalist Repeatedly Fined in Brest

The jour­nal­ist was found guilty of vio­lat­ing art. 22.9 by ille­gal­ly pro­duc­ing a mass media report – an inter­view with Raman Vasil­iuk, the cap­tain of the local foot­ball club Brest. The inter­view was pub­lished on the web­site of Bel­sat.

The jour­nal­ist argued that he worked as a non-staff jour­nal­ist of Bela­PAN news agency, and pro­vid­ed cre­den­tials. He also showed that the mate­r­i­al under con­sid­er­a­tion was pub­lished on the web­site of Bela­PAN.

“They set to think because there were no proofs that I had pre­pared the mate­ri­als for Bel­sat,” says Ales Liauchuk. The judge took a break, and after­wards announced the deci­sion – 9 mil­lion rubles fine (approx. 586 USD).

The jour­nal­ist has already been fined twice for jour­nal­is­tic work (since Decem­ber 2014), the sec­ond tri­al was held with­out the journalist’s par­tic­i­pa­tion; the total sum of the fines on him account to over 18 mil­lion rubles, which is near 1170 USD.

This year there have been 22 fines imposed on jour­nal­ists for work. Two more tri­als are expect­ed on July 9 and 10.