Aleksandr Shpilevsky, chairman of Belarus' State Customs Committee (SCC), assured reporters on Thursday that the authorities would return the BMW car that was seized from a German citizen by the Belarusian customs last summer. "Do not worry, the car will be returned; it will
be returned by the Supreme [Economic] Court's decision," he said.
Mr. Shpilevsky acknowledged that the decision to seize the car was wrong. "Since the Supreme Court has decided that the car should be returned, we will return it, of course, or pay money for it," he said.
As SCC Deputy Chairman Ivan Dubik told local customs officers in Brest last week, the German entered a Belarusian checkpoint on the Polish border at around 4 p.m., but all the senior officers had already left their workplaces by that time. The man had to wait until the following day, when he was accused of violating regulations for temporarily brought-in cars.
A district judge, and later the Brest Regional Court, ordered the confiscation of the EUR60,000 vehicle. Although the Supreme Economic Court annulled that decision as far back as October 3, the vehicle so far has not been returned to the owner. Holger Kraemer, first secretary with the German embassy in Minsk, said earlier this week that the embassy was concerned about the delay in returning the vehicle, which was still being kept in a Minsk garage. "That garage belongs to the presidential property management department, and since mid-October, they've been telling us some technical preconditions for releasing the car are missing," he told BelaPAN on Wednesday. "We wrote letters to the department in November and later in December, but
there has been no clear reply so far. Now that three and a half months have passed since the Supreme Economic Court annulled the confiscation order, the car still remains de facto confiscated, because it
still has not been returned to the rightful owner and he cannot use it."
The embassy will continue pressing for returning the car, he stressed.
Belarusian border guards and local policemen seized a group of 10 illegal migrants, presumably Pakistanis, near the village of Petki near Kobrin, Brest region, Wednesday into Thursday, said the press office of the State Border Troops Committee. The illegal migrants will soon be deported from the country, said the press office.
Police rounded up 28 illegal migrants from India in the village of Zakrosnitsa in the Kobrin district, Brest region, on January 13.
The Indians, who had neither entry visas nor registration stamps in their passports, were discovered in an abandoned house, the Interior Ministry's Information and Public Relations Department, told BelaPAN.
The illegals are expected to be deported from Belarus.
Two men died in a double house fire in the village of Sedruzh near Kamenets, Brest region, on Sunday.
On arrival at the scene after a call came in at around 2 a.m., firefighters saw the burning remains of a house belonging to a 64-year-old man and the house of a 41-year-old man ablaze, the press office of
the regional emergency department told BelaPAN. The two structures were located 800 feet apart.
The charred bodies of the two men were later found inside the wreckage.
The police assume that the older man, registered with the local mental clinic, may first have set fire to his own home and then to the other man's. Fires have taken seven human lives in the Brest region since the beginning of the year, according to the regional emergency department.
The Brest Customhouse will soon move into a new building, completed in Brest on December 30. It is located not far from the Zapadny Bug Customhouse, which ordered the new building.
The colleagues with the Brest Customhouse can vacate the offices that they rent at the main railroad station and several other places in the regional capital and move into the new building at 45 Gavrilova
Street any time now, the chief of the Zapadny Bug Customhouse, Vyacheslav Osintsev, told BelaPAN.
The five-storied building occupies an area of 4,000 square meters and contains a cafeteria and offices. Its construction was financed by the national government.The Zapadny Bug Customhouse has commissioned several construction projects in the last two years,
considerably improving the border infrastructure and working conditions for its staff, said Mr. Osintsev.
The completion of the Kozlovichi checkpoint's modernization in late 2003 has helped noticeably speed up the customs clearance of cargoes, he noted.
On December 23, a government commission certified the readiness condition of the upgraded Varshavsky Most checkpoint, which now has 12 traffic lanes and the necessary infrastructure. That project was financed jointly by Belarus and Russia. Aleksandr Lukashenko is expected to attend an opening ceremony for the checkpoint later this month. The Varshavsky Most checkpoint was in operation during the entire period of the modernization.
According to Mr. Osintsev, the European Union will soon announce its decision on financing the construction of the Kozlovichi 2 checkpoint, which would enable the clearance of both trucks and cars.
The modernization of the Mokrany checkpoint on the Ukrainian border is scheduled for 2005, and the modernization of the Domachevo checkpoint on the Polish border may start in the near future.
The first business incubator has been registered in Brest, Belarus' western regional capital with a population of 300,000.
According to Director Gennady Borisevich, a special commission will select the projects worth providing "hothouse conditions" for.
"The businesses that are selected will enjoy a whole range of services, such as organization, accounting assistance, low-rate room lease," he said in an interview with BelaPAN, adding that the enterprises
would receive individual assistance for two to three years until they can "stand on their own feet."
Afterward these economic entities will be asked to help beginners.
The operations of the incubator, which has the status of a limited company, will be funded with the use of proceeds from its commercial activity and the lease of space in its building.
The company will use a building with a total area of about 1000 square meters located on Internatsionalnaya Street. The building formerly belonged to the regional business association.
The incubator is expected to enter full operation in spring. Mr. Borisevich believes that there will be plenty of work to do, as 2003 saw an increase in the numbers of sole proprietors and small enterprises
in the region. There are currently more than 30,000 sole proprietors registered in the Brest region, some 1,900 small
private businesses, 401 businesses involving foreign capital and 483 private farms, together employing some 70,000 people, according to the enterprise department of the Brest Regional Executive Committee. Some 7,000 new jobs were created in the sector last year, which was considerably more than in 2002.
Nonetheless, there are only two private businesses per 1000 population compared with six in Russia and 35 in Poland.
Poland's customs authorities have banned station wagons from crossing the Belarusian-Polish border at the Varshavsky Most-Terespol and Domachevo-Slawatycze checkpoints.
Representatives of Belarus' Zapadny Bug Customhouse and the Belarusian State Border Troops Committee told BelaPAN they did not receive any official explanations of the move.
Sergei Maksimov, spokesman for the Zapadny Bug Customhouse, told BelaPAN that Poland had notified Belarus that it bars minivans from the two checkpoints on January 5, 2004, and that the vehicles should cross the border at the upgraded Kozlovichi-Kukuryki and Kuznica-Bruzgi checkpoints used by trucks.
However, wagons, including Volkswagen Passat and Audi Avant, have not been allowed to cross the border through these checkpoints as well. "These are cars. We let them cross [the border] at Varshavsky Most," Mr. Maksimov said. A Volkswagen Passat owner described the situation as absurd. "Me and my friend have the same cars.
His certificate says it is a "car" and the Poles let him through. Mine says it is a "wagon" and they sent me to Kozlovichi."
Sergei Romanov of the Brest regional road police department said the types of cars have been indicated in certificates only starting in 2003, that is why the same models registered in different periods may
have different descriptions. There are about 600 wagons in Brest, he said. Poland's Consulate General in Brest confirmed to BelaPAN that station wagons have not been allowed to cross the border via the two checkpoints starting January 5 but would not give any explanations.
23 January 2004