Affiliated media: Media Polesie, Director, Founder

Incident date: March 14, 2022

Attack type:

• Criminal/administrative prosecution excluding (1), (2) and (3)

Who attacked: Authorities

Source: Belarusian Association of Journalists

Location: Belarus, Luninets

Additional information:

The prosecutor’s office of the Luninets district initiated a criminal case for «abuse of power and official authority» (Article 424 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus) against the director and founder of MP Company, which owns the independent regional online media Media Polesie. According to the prosecutor’s office, the reason was the results of the financial audit. The inspectors claim that the media management paid some employees salaries off the books, and, accordingly, did not make contributions to the Social Security Fund and Belgosstrakh. As a result, in their opinion, the state suffered «damage of over BYN 10,000. At the same time, the prosecutor’s office did not conceal the fact that the financial audit was preceded by attempts to urge the media «to correct the situation» — to make them be selective in presenting information.