Russian embassy in Minsk confirms arrest of US lawyer's secretary
18:32, — Politics
The Russian embassy in Belarus confirmed to BelaPAN on Wednesday that a Russian national, Vladlena Funk, was arrested in Minsk last week.
«We confirm that she was detained,» Aleksandr Frolov, a counselor at the embassy, told BelaPAN. «It is likely that she was apprehended by state security agencies and is being held at the KGB's special detention center.»
He said that the woman had not applied to the embassy for consular or other assistance.
Ms. Funk was grabbed together with Russian-born US lawyer Emanuel Zeltser, for whom she works as a secretary, when they were exiting a plane in Minsk on March 12.
The reasons for the arrest are still unknown.
Mr. Zeltser, 54, heads non-governmental organization Russian-American Law Institute.
In 2001, he acted as defense lawyer for Pavel Borodin, who is now the state secretary of the Belarusian-Russian Union State, when the official was arrested in New York City on money laundering charges.
In 1995, Mr. Zeltser sued Inkombank, once Russia's second-largest bank, in a US federal court, accusing it of misappropriating funds from depositors in collaboration with the Bank of New York. He previously worked for the bank, but claimed that he was dismissed from his post after initiating an investigation into evidence of theft and fraud. Inkombank collapsed in 1998 amid Russia's financial crisis.
An US legal interpreter, Valery Shchukin, of whom Mr. Zeltser was once a client, told Russia's news agency RIA Novosti that the lawyer might have been arrested over his «close» connections with exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky. He said that the reason also could be the Inkombank case.
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