The Brest region is unlikely to meet its grain output target, 1.03 million tons, as up to 20 percent of the crops were destroyed by heavy rains. In addition, rains beat down the crops on thousands of hectares all across the Polesye region, which impedes harvesting, Aleksei Trotsyuk, deputy
chairman of the Brest regional government's agricultural committee, told BelaPAN.
As of July 29, farms in the region reaped 200,000 tons of grain from 79,600 hectares, or 24.4 percent of the total crop area. They are expected to finish harvesting grains and legumes between August 10 and 15, Mr. Trotsyuk said.
According to him, the average yield is about 2.76 tons per hectare. Higher yields are reported in the Brest and Kobrin districts, where 3.05 tons is reaped on the average. More than 1,500 combines are involved in the harvesting.
Several valuable prizes remain unclaimed by the winners following the eighth drawing of the Berestye II lottery in Brest.
The most expensive of these is a VAZ 2110 hatchback. Others include video recorders, stereos, microwaves, vacuum cleaners, electric kettles, mixers, hairdryers, cameras, etc.
The winner did not show up at Brest Lotteries until two months after his ticket won an apartment in the regional center, said a source with the lottery company. If winners let the deadline pass, their prizes proceed to the next drawing. Thus, another VAZ 2110 found a winner in the
sixth drawing after being left unclaimed after the third. All funds raised through the lottery go to the regional government's acc ount and are spent on sports-related projects, said Brest Lotteries Deputy Director Valentina Sidorchuk. According to her, almost three million rubels worth of prizes in the seventh drawing still remain unclaimed. The holder of
lucky tickets in the March 31 eighth drawing can take out their prizes until September 31.
The ninth drawing is scheduled for Thursday, and Brest Lotteries hope that all the winners remember their prizes before the deadline.
"We can only think of a lack of attention as the reason prizes are not taken out," said Ms. Sidorchuk. "What is the two thousand rubles worth that you pay for a lottery ticket these days? It's money for those who are not rich, but those better off buy tickets and then forget about them," she added. Berestye II winners, resident in Brest and various district centers and smaller towns in the Brest region, have received 11
apartments in the regional capital, 12 cars and 5,400 other items or money prizes over the few years of the lottery's history.
The Brest regional government has banned the sale of alcohol in village stores before 11 a.m. and after 6 p.m. for the period of the coming harvesting campaign.
The decision was initiated by the regional police department, which cited the need to prevent farmers, in particular combine operators from drinking alcoholic beverages in order to make their performance more efficient, a spokesman for the department told BelaPAN.
However, the ban does not apply to village bars and roadside cafeterias.
Villagers are skeptical about the measure's efficiency. "Truck drivers bringing grain from fields to granaries call at the store during the working hours and buy alcohol without problems," a salesperson at
a Brest district said in an interview with BelaPAN.The ban has been introduced for about 20 days but may be extended depending on the harvesting campaign's progress.
A Brest Regional Court panel found two Brest residents guilty of arranging an attempt on the life of a local businessman. One of the accused, the director of a funeral services enterprise named Chimera, was sentenced to eight years and a retired police officer to eight years and six months in prison.
The trial established that the businessman had borrowed a certain amount of money from the Chimera director and failed to repay it. The creditor turned to the retired police lieutenant colonel for help and the latter hired an unemployed city resident, promising to pay him $300 for the murder. The hired man, however, reported both to the police.
The police staged the businessman's murder, having made him up as dead and taken convincing photographs. The customers were arrested as soon as the "killer" handed them the photos and was paid the promised money. However, the suspects were acquitted in their first trial. They were ultimately convicted after the police managed to
produce conclusive evidence.
A similar case will soon be heard in the Brest Regional Court. In the dock will be a Drogichin-based small business owner and her son-in-law, who allegedly planned to arrange the murder of the chief sanitary physician of the Drogichin district who had a conflict with them. Following a similar police operation, the suspected conspirators were arrested and are currently held in a pretrial detention center.
Officers of the regional vice and drug control police department in Brest seized 450 grams of amphetamine from a Brest district resident on July 19. The 32-year-old man was arrested when he was trying to sell 1,491 amphetamine pills, estimated at $5,000, in a bar on Kovelskaya Street, the press service of the Brest Regional Police Office told BelaPAN.
The police currently try to trace the origin of the amphetamine.
In the first half of the year, the Brest region's drug control officers seized more than 85 kilograms of poppy straw, around 1.5 kg of marijuana, almost 43 kg of extracted opium, 357 grams of acetylated opium, 210 grams of heroine, 1.1 gram of cocaine and 1.4 kilograms of various illicit stimulants, the regional vice and drug control department told BelaPAN.
As many as 746 residents of the Brest region have been diagnosed as being drug addicts and 374 people have been registered as drug users, according to the department.
Law-enforcement agencies in the Brest region launched criminal proceedings against three men suspected of violent resistance to police officers. An unemployed 31-year-old resident of Zhabinka is suspected of inflicting a head injury to a police sergeant, who attempted to arrest him for drinking liquor in a public place (near a boarding school in
Brest).
In a separate incident, a 19-year-old vocational school student and a 21-year-old student at the Vitebsk Veterinary Academy in Lyakhovichi hit a police officer with a bottle, while he was trying to arrest them for a minor civil offense. The men face charges under Article 363 of the Criminal Code, which carries a maximum prison term of five years.
A district court judge in Brest on July 18 found two Brest residents, a woman and a man, guilty of running a brothel. The woman, who was regarded as the leader of the "criminal group," was sentenced to four years in a medium-security prison. The man received a three-year "restricted freedom" sentence to be served in an open-type correctional institution.
In addition, the judge ordered the confiscation of almost $8,000 from them as illegal proceeds. The trial established that the accused had rented apartments in Brest for prostitutes and supplied customers to them. The couple was arrested in late May after neighbors complained to the police. The accused pleaded not guilty. Under Belarusian regulations, they may appeal their sentences within ten days.
The law enforcement agencies in the Brest region have opened 14 pimping cases this year, the regional vice police office told BelaPAN.
The Brest region police suspect a high-ranking customs officer of helping smuggle a shipment through the Polish border last month.
According to the Brest Regional Police Department, the officer, whose name is not disclosed, is believed to have assisted a truck, stopped for the failure to properly declare the cargo, in escaping before inspectors could verify the stated information about the consignor and the consignee. However, the customs recorded an administrative offense and seized 33 billion rubels worth of goods. The cargo in question reportedly belonged to a company in Logoisk, Minsk region, destined for RTF Spetstekhnika based in Moscow.
Later in the day, the truck was stopped by officers of the Brest regional police's economic crime prevention department at a road police post near the village of Kolpenitsa, Baranovichi district. A subsequent investigation, which took several weeks, revealed that RTF Spetstekhnika had been registered with the use of counterfeit documents. The entire cargo, valued at 605.2 million rubels, was seized.
Last week, the suspected officer's case went to the Prosecutor General's Office, but no criminal proceedings were launched as of Monday.
The Brest region's enterprises and individuals owed banks 24.8 billion rubels, $6.3 million, EUR 937,300 and 17.9 million Russian rubles on loans as of July 1, 2003, the Regional Prosecutor's Office said.
Debts on loans extended in 1993 and 1994 account for the greater part of this amount. Some of the persons suspected of bank frauds currently stay abroad and criminal proceedings against them have been suspended. Thus, Anatoly Grishchuk, the former head of Belvneshekonombank's regional branch, is suspected of having authorized bad loans estimated at a total of $400,000 and 540
million rubels. Belarus' law-enforcement agencies consider filing an extradition request with the authorities in Poland, where Mr. Grishchuk currently resides. Mikhail Osovsky, director of the Luninets branch of Brestkombank, has been internationally wanted on similar charges.
Many bad loan recipients also fled Belarus. Between 1993 and 2003, the regional prosecutorial agency opened 123 criminal cases on loan fraud charges. Five bank fraud cases have already gone to trial this year.
Vasily Dolgolyov, chairman of the Brest Regional Executive Committee, on July 14 took district executive chiefs to task for wage arrears in the agricultural sector and failure to meet production growth targets.
He gave district heads one month to improve the situation, threatening that they may lose their jobs on September 1 if the deadline is not met. Mr. Dolgolyov particularly criticized the leadership of the Zhabinka, Malorita, Kamenets, Pinsk, Ivanovo and Pruzhany districts, according to Roman Voitishko, press secretary of the regional government.
Mr. Dolgolyov demanded the regional "vertical" cut by 50 percent the managerial staff of collective farms and district agriculture departments. He said that the management of unprofitable farms should consist of two people – the farm director and the chief accountant. Mr. Dolgolyov said that managers should not receive their pay until they pay wages to farmers. The regional governor gave scolding to district chiefs four days after he and other regional leaders came under harsh criticism from Belarusian ruler Aleksandr Lukashenko for ineffective work, debts to
farmers and falsifications of reports. The press office claims that the regional government pays much attention to personnel management. In
particular, it says, in 2003 the regional governor sacked the heads of the Stolin and Drogichin district executive committees, two deputy heads of the district government in Baranovichi, and 23 farm directors.
The regional government has recently dismissed the director and the chief accountant of the milk and cheese factory in Stolin for errors in statistical reports and poor performance.
30 July 2003