“Hart” Founder Fined 50 Minimal Wages for Old Fly-sheets

09.02.2004.

On 2 February Homel Tsentralny Borough Court fined Artsiom Buryla, one of the founder of Homel youth organization “Hart”, 50 minimal wages (875 000 rubles) for import of old fly-sheets in Belarus. According to him, the facts, presented in the verdict, were rudely falsified.

Buryla was detained at the check-point “Novaya Huta”, on the border between Belarus and the Ukraine on his way from the latter. In his car custom officers found 2 566 fly-sheets of different kinds. The main inspector of Homel customs unit Aliaksandr Isachenka qualified these fly-sheets as printed editions that couldn’t be used as private property in such quantity and composed the report of violation of Article 193-9, part 1 of the Code of Administrative Violations against Buryla, who didn’t declare the fly-sheets.

Artsiom Buryla explained that the found fly-sheets were waste paper: the public voting concerning the third presidential term to Aliaksandr Lukashenka, took place on 7 November 2003 and he carried them in the car as his “family didn’t let him to keep them at home and he didn’t want to simply throw them out”.

In the verdict it was specified that Artsiom Buryla drove the fly-sheets in the trailer “ZIL-130” five weeks after their real date and that the fly-sheets “had considerable material value”, that Buryla participated in the trial alone and took the blame. The victim completely disagrees with this. He says that he drove in a simple car, didn’t take the blame, participated in the trial together with a representative and that the cost of the fly-sheets was defined neither by the custom officer, nor by the court, as this petition was defeated by the court.

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