Tut.by Editor Maryna Zolatava on Trial: Witnesses Claim Coercion on Part of Investigation

Mary­na Zolata­va is charged under Part 2 Arti­cle 425 of the Crim­i­nal Code (omis­sion by an offi­cial), the penal­ty estab­lished by the arti­cle is a fine or up to 5 years in prison.

Wit­ness­es in the case are Tut.by jour­nal­ists, who were pre­vi­ous­ly charged under the crim­i­nal «BelTA case».  The inter­ests of the injured par­ties were rep­re­sent­ed by lawyers of BelTA and Belarus Segod­nya pub­lish­ing house.

The wit­ness­es do not deny hav­ing used the pass­words for BelTA’s paid sub­scrip­tion that belonged to oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. BelTA case defen­dants (edi­tors and jour­nal­ists) have paid large amounts of com­pen­sa­tion when the crim­i­nal cas­es were requal­i­fied as the admin­is­tra­tive cas­es.

TUT.BY Media Gen­er­al Direc­tor Lyud­mi­la Chek­ina told the court that the Com­pa­ny did not approve of the actions of employ­ees.

» This is not right. We believe that the staff did a wrong thing. We have repaired the dam­age claimed from TUT.BY Media and issued loans to all staff involved in the case to pay the dam­ages» — said Chek­ina.

The jour­nal­ists who were detained Aug. 7, 2018, state in court that the inves­ti­ga­tors demand­ed that they tes­ti­fy against Zolata­va.

- August 7, before the ques­tion­ing by the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, they told me to tes­ti­fy that Zolo­to­va had giv­en instruc­tions to use BelTA’s paid sub­scrip­tion. In response, I wrote a state­ment that I had nev­er received such instruc­tions from Zolata­va. This is real­ly true, my state­ment is includ­ed in the mate­ri­als of the case — told the court Tut.by edi­tor Han­na Kalty­hi­na.

Tut.by Edi­tor Hali­na Ulasik tes­ti­fied that after the search the inves­ti­ga­tors who ques­tioned her on August 7, want­ed her to give evi­dence against the top man­age­ment of the por­tal.

- On August 7 they detained me after the search and took me in for ques­tion­ing as a wit­ness. Dur­ing the inter­ro­ga­tion, the inves­ti­ga­tor told me that I should state that I entered BelTA pass­word «on direct orders and under the pas­sive eye of the man­age­ment». When I refused to say so, I was told that I did not wish to engage with the inves­ti­ga­tion, and I was no longer a wit­ness but a sus­pect and they detained me. Then they sent me to the deten­tion cen­ter, — told the court Hali­na Ulasik about her ques­tion­ing at the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee.

Tut.by Edi­tor Ulyana Babayed said that she had used BelTA pass­word when she worked at BelKP-PRESS. When she joined Tut.by she con­tin­ued to use the same pass­word.

Babayed was brought to admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty for 19 news pieces that she read as a BelTA sub­scriber.

«I paid 8580 rubles (about $4,000) for read­ing 19 news pieces by BelTA dur­ing 18 months. Although BelTA has no sub­scrip­tion ser­vices for indi­vid­u­als, I was giv­en the bill per­son­al­ly. In fact, one news piece cost me 451 rubles,» — said Ulyana Babayed in court.

Ulyana said , that the news that she had read as a sub­scriber  had long been in the pub­lic domain on the BelTA web­site. Babayed gave exact dates and times of the news pub­lish­ing in teh pub­lic domain, which accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion, she read lat­er as a sub­scriber.

Babayed told the court about cer­tain pres­sure on her by the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee on August 7.

«The head of the inves­tiga­tive group yelled at me and demand­ed evi­dence against Zolata­va. My lawyer was not allowed into the build­ing and they did not warn me about my right not to tes­ti­fy,»- said Babayed.

- This [inter­ro­ga­tions] last­ed four months and was dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the offence, — she said in court.

Edi­tor Uladzis­lau Kulet­s­ki told the court that some of the infor­ma­tion in the min­utes of his inter­ro­ga­tion dur­ing the pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion was not true.

- The inves­ti­ga­tors said that they would just not accept any oth­er tes­ti­mo­ny from me. Some parts of the tes­ti­mo­ny were imposed by the inves­ti­ga­tors. They were very inter­est­ed in Zolata­va and Kalty­hi­na, every­thing was about them. I was told that if I did not sign such tes­ti­mo­ny, they would make my staff account­able, — said Kulet­s­ki.

All 58 vol­umes of the crim­i­nal case have already been read  by the court.

BelTA rep­re­sen­ta­tives stat­ed that Zolatave and oth­er per­sons involved in the case had already paid the dam­ages. The bills had been filed in accor­dance with the sub­scrip­tion fees for each par­tic­u­lar month.

BelTA also asked to col­lect 6,000 rubles from Zolata­va as a pay­ment for BelTA lawyers ser­vices.

BAJ chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets sums up the first week of the tri­al: Nei­ther BelTA, nor BelTA cus­tomers took any mea­sures to pro­tect the pass­words of paid sub­scrip­tion, they could be used by almost any­one. That might be because the sub­scrip­tion did not have a big added val­ue, as all the arti­cles were open for pub­lic access on the BelTA web­site in just a few min­utes. 

After­all, I should remind you that Zolata­va is charged with omis­sion by an offi­cial. How­ev­er, the dis­cus­sion in court revolves around oth­er things all the time. Those that seemed to have been closed and dropped. For­mer defen­dants plead­ed guilty to using pass­words under the pres­sure of the inves­ti­ga­tion (which becomes evi­dent in court) and paid incred­i­bly inflat­ed dam­ages. How­ev­er, the court keeps address­ing the issue, although Zolata­va is charged under an entire­ly dif­fer­ent arti­cle of the Crim­i­nal Code.

The only pos­i­tive result of this tri­al is that we have got an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see and hear about the work of both the inves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee, and the state-owned media.

Mary­na Zolata­va is the only defen­dant in the BelTA case; the oth­er defen­dants — 14 employ­ees of var­i­ous media out­lets — were released from crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty but charged with an admin­is­tra­tive infringe­ment.  In addi­tion to fines, the jour­nal­ists were oblig­ed to cov­er the dam­ages. The amounts vary from 3, 000 to 17, 000 BYN (about $1,500 — 8, 500).

Mary­na Zolata­va is charged under Part 2 Arti­cle 425 of the Crim­i­nal Code (omis­sion by an offi­cial), the penal­ty estab­lished by the arti­cle is a fine or up to 5 years in prison.

Ini­tial­ly she was also a sus­pect under Part 2 Arti­cle 349 (Unau­tho­rized access to com­put­er infor­ma­tion) of the Crim­i­nal Code. The oth­er jour­nal­ists were charged under this very arti­cle.  Accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion com­mit­tee, of all the sus­pects, Zolata­va is the only one who did not access the paid paid sub­scrip­tion mate­ri­als. Crim­i­nal charges of unau­tho­rized access against Mary­na Zolata­va have been dropped «due to non-exis­tence of a crime.»

On August 7 Tut.by and Bela­PAN offices were searched and staff detained. The police detained Tut.by’s chief edi­tor Mary­na Zolata­va, edi­tor Han­na Kalty­hi­na, Hali­na Ulasik and Han­na Yer­ma­chonak, Bela­PAN’s chief edi­tor Iry­na Leushy­na and reporter Tat­siana Kar­avenko­va, Deutsche Welle reporter Pauliuk Byk­ous­ki and edi­tor of the Belarusy I Rynok web­site Ali­ak­sei Zhukau. They all spent a few days in Akrestsi­na tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter. The jour­nal­ists and media out­lets were sup­port­ed by the Euro­pean Union, Coun­cil of Europe, the Unit­ed States, as well as inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tions.

Belarus. The quantitative media results of the year 2018