Vasily Slesarchuk, director of the state-run food company Brestplodovoshchprom in Brest in southwestern Belarus, has been charged by the Committee for State Security (KGB) with "abuse of power or position for personal gain or interest."
The director is accused of selling a company-owned Volkswagen Passat to a private individual in December 2001 at a price below actual cost (at about $8,800). Brestplodovoshchprom bought the car for an equivalent of $21,000 in May 2000.
Mr. Slesarchuk has not been dismissed from his position. The Brest city government merely suspended him on May 27. He spent several days in a KGB jail and was then released after signing a pledge not to flee from justice. However, the charge he faces carries up to four years in prison under Belarus' Criminal Code.
Prosecutors have instituted criminal proceedings against the former director of the Belarus collective farm in the Brest region.
Spiridon Podshibyakin, a member of the local soviet (elected council) is charged with stealing meat from the farm to the amount of 4 million rubels (about $2,300 at the official exchange rate on May 29).
In March, collective farmers forced Mr. Podshibyakin to resign, saying that he had bought a car and built a house at the farm's expense, while they did not get their pay for several months. Investigators later said that the director had forged documents to steal meat to the total amount of 4 million rubels. Investigators said that Mr. Podshibyakin sold the
meat to Ukraine. The law enforcement agencies want the former director
stripped of his immunity and arrested.
An agreement establishing the Belovezhskaya Pushcha (Bialowieza) euroregion was signed in the eastern Polish town of Hajnowka on May 27.
The ceremony on the occasion was attended by the Polish foreign minister and the heads of the districts in which the 160-hectare Belovezhskaya Pushcha (Bialowieza) forest is located - the Pruzhany, Kamenets and Svisloch districts in Belarus and nine districts in Poland.
With highly developed tourist services and science, the Polish part of the reserve is reportedly in much better condition than the Belarusian one. The forest holds the Council of Europe's European Diploma for Protected Areas.
Beginning this fall, the Belarusians will have to pay a small charge for driving along the Brest-Minsk-Moscow motorway, Mikhail Borovoi, the country's transport minister, told legislators at a seminar in Minsk
on May 23.
A toll for driving along the motorway has been collected from foreign vehicles and Belarusian trucks that have more than four wheels. Foreign trucks pay a two-way toll of $100 for using the motorway.
Two Kobrin, Brest region, residents - a man and a woman - have been sentenced to fines totaling 6.1 million rubels (approx. $3,460) for a second within a year illegal crossing of the Belarusian border. The man, a citizen of Russia born in 1955 who has permission to reside in Belarus, and the woman, a Belarusian citizen born in 1957, were first arrested by border guards on May 31, 2001, while attempting to smuggle 1 million rubels worth of foodstuffs into Ukraine, the State Border Troops Committee's press office reported. They had both the car they kept the goods in and the foodstuffs confiscated by the court. Each of them also had to pay $17 in fines.
Border guards arrested the two again in the Pinsk Border Control Unit's area on February 8 while they were attempting to illegally enter Ukraine in a car.
A conference and a church service held in Brest this past weekend marked the 161st anniversary of the death of historian and politician Juljan Ursyn Niemciewicz, born in 1758 in his family's estate of Skoki several kilometers from Brest.
In a 1794 uprising for Polish independence, Niemciewicz was aide-de-camp to the rebels' leader, Thaddeus Kosciusko. Together with Kosciusko, he spent two years in a Russian prison following the defeat of the uprising. He then lived in the United States for several years, and returned to Skoki in 1807. Based on his 1811-1828 travels, he wrote a
book about the history and culture of his homeland, describing Brest, Grodno, Novogrudok and other places in what is now western Belarus. He is the author of numerous other historical works.
The May 17-19 memorial events brought together Niemciewicz family members, researchers, historians, writers, journalists, about 150 in all. Flowers were laid at the historian's grave in Brest. The organizers - the Polish Consulate General in Brest and the local Polish Society -
see the anniversary as a way to highlight the future of the Skoki estate, which dates from the late 18th century and is becoming increasingly dilapidated.
A pipe bomb presumably filled with sulfur and magnesium exploded in the district telecommunications office at 30 Internatsionalnaya Street in Kobrin, Brest region, at about midnight on May 13. A man threw the bomb into the office lobby, and it went off, breaking the glass
of three doors. There were no people inside, so no one was
injured.
The Committee for State Security (KGB) and the police are investigating this accident, unusual for the quiet town. The police have identified the bomb thrower but have not been disclosed his name.
The Brest subsidiary of Belarusian Railroads (BR) opened a railroad museum in Brest on May 15. This is a second railroad museum in the region: the first one opened in the city of Baranovichi three years ago.
The museum is located on Masherova Avenue, Brest's thoroughfare, hundreds of meters away from the memorial "Brest Hero Fortress."
Currently on display are about 50 rare machines -- steam engines built before and after World War II, a German-made locomotive left from the war, railway cranes, and train cars. All the items exhibited are in operational condition. Arkady Priveten, director of the museum, collected the locomotives for the last ten years of his service as chief
of the Brest railway depot.
The Belarusian ruler's Administrative Department has refused to renew a contract with the chief forester of Belavezhskaya Pushcha, the national park in western Belarus considered unique in Europe in terms of
animal and plant diversity.
Yevgeny Smoktunovich, who headed the park in 2000 and was
later demoted to chief forester, lost his job because he resented large-scale felling initiated by the park's new director, Nikolai Bambiza, park employees said. Another opponent of the felling, Deputy Director Georgy Kozulko, had his contract terminated last fall. Shortly before his dismissal, Mr. Smoktunovich was reprimanded for foresters' failure to burn down felling debris.
In February 2002, the Belarusian Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection dismissed reports of large-scale felling in Belavezhskaya Pushcha, saying that only dry and dead trees were cut.
About 200 park employees, including high-skilled workers, have reportedly been sacked in the last 12 months.
The Brest branch of Belarus' Committee on Organized Crime and Corruption has reported detaining a truck carrying about 10 tons of barreled alcohol lacking excise stamps and worth over 20 million rubels ($11,500). The truck was found on May 7 in a parking lot outside the
village of Petki near the city of Kobrin in southwestern Belarus. A man who accompanied the truck in a car offered resistance and had to be subdued, officials said. He, the truck driver, both vehicles and the cargo were arrested.
31 May 2002