The Committee for State Security (KGB) has arrested the head of Black Red White, a large Belarusian-Polish joint venture in the free economic zone "Brest", on a charge of taking a total of $741,550 out of Belarus illegally.
According to the KGB, it took the businessman three trips in 2001 to get the entire amount across the Polish border. Each time, he showed a legally allowed amount of hard cash at the Belarusian customs, and declared the true amount he was carrying once on the Polish side.
The Brest Regional Court has sentenced former police officer Leonid Kozeko to 15 years in prison for gunning down a 23-year-old man in May 2001. The Supreme Court of Belarus has let the sentence stand.
The killing occurred while Mr. Kozeko was consuming liquor with three friends at a warehouse in Brest that he was supposed to be guarding. In the middle of the party, as if joking, he pulled out his service pistol, put it to the head of one of the friend s, then pulled the trigger. The man died in the hospital the following day.
A 26-year-old mother and her three children died late on December 25 in their burning house in the village of Lyshcha near Pinsk in Brest Region.
The fire was reported at 8 p.m. Firefighters arrived ten minutes later, but the house was already engulfed in flames, leaving no chance of escape to the young woman and her three kids - a one-year-old boy and his sisters aged three and five.
The father of the family was away visiting neighbors when the fire started. He rushed to the rescue only to find the house all ablaze. He had to abandon his attempts to get in through a window and was taken to the hospital with second-degree burns.
Authorities have several theories as to what caused the tragedy. It is considered most likely that the fire was unintentionally started by the children, whom their drunk mother presumably left unattended.
This is the second time this month that several people die in a house fire in the Pinsk district. Two weeks ago, a fire caused by careless smoking killed a man and his two adult sons in the village of Koshevichi.
The newly appointed chief of the Internal Affairs Department of the Brest Regional Executive Committee, 50-year-old police Colonel Vladimir Shafarenko, was unanimously elected chairman of the Regional Hockey
Federation at the federation's founding conference held this past week.
Mr. Shafarenko was appointed to head the regional police in November. While presenting the new regional police chief to reporters, Interior Minister Vladimir Naumov then called him the head of the regional hockey federation, which the journalists took as a joke of the minister, who had been elected president of the National Hockey Federation not long before. But General Naumov proved to have been serious.
fans' club, and other organizations.
These organizations and the justice department of the Brest Regional Executive Committee have received a letter from the rector that says, "The educational institution 'Aleksandr Pushkin Brest State University' notifies you
that providing legal-address offices to the said organizations does not seem possible at present."
Brest residents call outrageous the plans of the local authorities to construct a burial place for radioactive waste in the outskirts of the city. People are ready to stage protest for nature protection. The matter is that the Brest direction of the capital construction received 100 million BLR from the country’s budget. The money is allotted for liquidation of a so-called ‘object # 802’ and construction of a burial place for radioactive waste.
Object # 802’ is a formerly secret territory by the well-known memorial “Brest Fortress”. Until 1980-ies uranium ore that was taken from atomic power stations in Eastern Europe was reloaded there. It was necessary to reload the ore, as the railway in the former USSR does not correspond European width.
Few people knew about this dangerous place in the center of the city. However, experts confirmed that the radiation level at some spots of this area are hundreds times higher than usual. The most contaminated spots of the ground were taken to the Ukraine and stored in one of special mines. The future of the ‘Object # 802’ belonged on the actions of Belarusian authorities.
As Radio Svaboda informs, mass protest of the people is possible. People are set to protest against actions of the system that do not consider it important to consult people about construction of dangerous objects.
The Council of Ministers' directive added to the FEZ the territory of the Brest Electromechanical, Electronic, Electric Lamp, and Machine-Building Factories and the electronic factory Tsvetotron.
Valery Rainchik, the FEZ deputy chief manager, told BelaPAN that the above-mentioned enterprises are not entitled to tax breaks as other enterprises of the FEZ. The directive allows companies that invest in businesses in the FEZ to occupy vacant premises at these enterprises.
He stressed that the directive is essential for the FEZ, because the zone's management has no funds to build infrastructure in the area near the Brest airport, which is also part of the FEZ.
In late November, Russia's BELS intends to begin constructing a furniture factory near the airport. Five more companies have reserved an area in the vicinity. The FEZ currently has 93 resident companies, which pledged $136 million in investment.
Participants at a conference of the Brest Regional Trade Union Association (BRTUA) on December 13 spoke against suspending "a social dialogue" with the local authorities, but criticized region governor Vasily Dolgolyov for "misunderstanding social partnership basics".
Speakers at the conference noted tensions in BRTUA's relations with the local authorities. "The unions policy is aimed at maintaining good relations with the authorities and associations of employers," said BRTUA Chairman Vladimir Mirochnik. "But we cannot but notice that many agreements have a declarative and formal nature." He expressed regret that the regional government does not allow trade unionists to attend its meetings and that only the leaders of four unions most loyal to the authorities were invited to a meeting with the Belarusian ruler in
November. "One can call these facts a deliberate distortion of social partnership basics," Mr. Mirochnik said. Asked about the reasons for strained relations with the authorities, Mr. Mirochnik told BelaPAN, "Dolgolyov does not understand what is social partnership and the authorities constantly put pressure on trade unions." Having classified trade union dues as non-urgent payments, the authorities undermined unions' financial position, he added. "Many regional and grass-root organizations fight for survival. There are even three vacant high posts in the union -- people quit because of low salaries."
On December 13, Vasily Manyuk, the new first deputy chairman of the Belarusian State Television and Radio Company (BSTRC), introduced Larisa Dobrodomova as his successor as TV and radio chief for the Brest region.
Ms. Dobrodomova has worked on Brest TV for over a decade, rising from reporter to deputy chief. In November, Mr. Manyuk was appointed first deputy to the BSTRC's new chairman, Yegor Rybakov, and Ms. Dobrodomova took over as acting chief in Brest. "Dobrodomova is the best among the proposed candidates, because she knows our work and our problems," one Brest TV journalist commented. Other candidates for the post included Nina Shpak, chief of the Information and Social Relations Department of the Brest Regional Executive Committee (the region's government); Aleksandr Zhuk, Brest governor Vasily Dolgolyov's press secretary, and Sergei Arkhireyev, chief editor for Brest TV.
The Belarusian Helsinki Committee (BHC), Belarus' prominent human rights organization, has registered a regional branch in Brest.
The branch head, Igor Maslovsky, considers it remarkable that the Justice Office of the Brest Regional Executive Committee (regional government) registered the branch on December 10, International Human Rights Day. Mr. Maslovsky sees his branch's priority as "protecting human rights and informing the public about the human rights situation in Belarus and worldwide."
Mr. Maslovsky has just lost his job at the Department of Geography of Brest State University. According to him, the Department wanted him to stay, but the University rector fired him anyway because of his activities as member of the BHC and the Belarusian Social Democratic Party.
28 December 2001