Supreme Court Upholds Fine to Lohvinau

The absence of the reg­is­tra­tion as a dis­trib­u­tor of print prod­ucts in 2014 end­ed up with a tax inspec­tion at the end of the year. The tax inspec­tors sued Lohv­in­au in Eco­nom­ic Court, which ruled to fine the book­seller 30 basic amounts (5.4 mil­lion rubles) for work with­out reg­is­tra­tion and to con­fis­cate prof­its of the year which was claimed to be 961 mil­lion rubles.

Lohv­in­au plead­ed for pub­lic help to raise the funds to com­pen­sate the fine and con­fis­ca­tion. The book­seller said the sum of mon­ey was not the prof­it, but the annu­al turnover, and the book­store would go bank­rupt, and he might face per­son­al crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty. The pub­lic and lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ty are keep­ing a marathon of sol­i­dar­i­ty; almost fourth part of the fine has been col­lect­ed by now. The book­store keeps work under anoth­er legal enti­ty.

Last year Lohv­in­au applied six times to get reg­is­tered as a dis­trib­u­tor of print prod­ucts (BAJ note – the oblig­a­tion to reg­is­ter as such was intro­duced with the new law on pub­lish­ers and dis­trib­u­tors of print prod­ucts enact­ed on Jan­u­ary 1, 2014; the reg­is­tra­tion should have been obtained with­in a year). The last of the refusals was due to incor­rect postal code indi­cat­ed in the appli­ca­tion form. Lohv­in­au tried to dis­pute the last refusal of reg­is­tra­tion of his book­store as a dis­trib­u­tor of print prod­ucts; how­ev­er, the Supreme Court sup­port­ed the stand­ing of the reg­is­ter­ing body. On Jan­u­ary 30, the Judge of the Supreme Court Ali­ak­san­dr Pau­tau sup­port­ed the Ministry’s point of view.

Ear­li­er, in 2013 the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion ter­mi­nat­ed Lohvinau’s license as a pub­lish­er. The pre­text for the sanc­tion was deci­sion of Ash­mi­any dis­trict court that the pho­to album Belarus Press Pho­to 2011, pub­lished by Lohv­in­au, con­tained extrem­ist con­tents. The court deci­sion on the pho­to album was denounced by reporters’ pro­fes­sion­al com­mu­ni­ty. Lohv­in­au, in his turn, argued that he could not fore­see a year before that the album could be claimed extrem­ist, but this did not mat­ter, and the Supreme Eco­nom­ic Court upheld the Ministry’s deci­sion to rip the pub­lish­er off the pub­lish­ing license. In Feb­ru­ary 2014, Lohin­au reg­is­tered an orga­ni­za­tion Lit­er­ary House Lohv­in­au in Vil­nius, as he hoped, tem­porar­i­ly.