Lohvinau sues Ministry of Information

The director of the publishing house, shut down by authorities, has registered a claim with the Supreme Commercial Court.

The claim demands to find the order by the Ministry of Information to revoke the publishing license invalid, the press-service of Belarusian Association of Journalists reports.

The information came from the publishing house’s employee Paviel Kasciukievich.

An individual entrepreneur Ihar Lohvinau received the notification on his license revocation a month ago, on 23 September. It said that the decision was made by the Ministry of Information on 20 September, the order was signed the same day.

The license was revoke “due to blatant violations of the licensing legislation”. According to the Ministry of Information the violation was the publication of the album “Belarus Press Photo 2011”, which was found extremist by the court of Ashmiany district on 18 April 2013 (Lohvinau was the album’s publisher).

In the publishing house they believe that the license was revoke illegally. The owner of the publishing house Ihar Lohvinau sent a letter to the Ministry of Information on 7 October, in which he justified his position and asked for the order to be cancelled. There has been not response to the letter so far.

“According to commercial and procedural legislation, the publishing house could file a lawsuit within a month after having received a notification on the license revocation. Thus, on 23 October it was the deadline”, - the deputy chairman of the Belarusian Association of Journalists Andrej Bastuniec explained.