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Head of State Control Committee faces dismissal or imprisonment

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Head of State Control Committee faces dismissal or imprisonment

Arrests of Homel officials can result in dismissals of important executives.

Such an opinion has been expressed in an interview to charter97.org website by the head of the human rights centre “Legal Assistance to the Population” Aleh Vouchak, who commented on the arrest of the leadership of Homel regional executive committee.

- How do you think, what the detentions of Homel regional executive committee assistants mean? Where the clues could be discovered?

- Our organisation is carrying out monitoring on corrupt practices, and we have an inside joke that recently so many criminal cases have been opened on corruption, that the food products price rise is finally to be exceeded. Now we see that it’s not the news, and arrests of officials have become an everyday occasion for Belarusians. Everybody knows that we have corruption.

As long as regional executive committees have a right to allocate budget funds, state property, abuse and violations are to stay there, as everything is going on without control, and we have a clan system and nepotism everywhere, and especially in regions. It could be said about entire Belarus, not only Homel.

- Why does it happen in Homel in particular?

- It is certainly continuation of the series of arrests: a former mayor of Homel Pilipets, then the former Homel regional KGB chief Lyaskouski. These are the same links. All of them are implicated in corruption.

- Who could be the next?

- There are several facets to that. The first one is Lukashenka’s fear of corruption. Ukrainian events have demonstrated that the East, the West and the South of Ukraine had not revolted so much against European integration or the Customs Union, but against corruption. That is why Lukashenka has no choice: it is clear he is to run for office in 2015 election, and until that time there would be even more impressive “campaigns”. And by the way, previously we had arrests of secondary importance, and now they have passed on to high-ranking persons.

So the question suggests itself: whose region it was? Alyaksandr Yakabson (the photo: on the left). Yakabson is presiding in the State Control Committee now. So it means that he is either to be kept on the ropes or ousted from power. But a pretext is needed for that, and some people who could disclose something about him.

For example, the trial over the former deputy chairman of Belneftekhm concern has been finished. Investigators put a pressure on him, for him to tell for whom from the higher officials he had taken bribes. But he refused to talk. And why deputy officials are arrested? In order to get compromising information about their superiors. As it is impossible that assistants take bribes, while the head of Homel regional executive committee is unaware about that.

As before, law-enforcing agencies have run late. The question is: where have they been? They were to nip the corruption in the bud, not allowing it to turn into a huge tree with so many branches. And now it is too hard to struggle. And Lukashenka has nothing else to do but to grip by the throat higher officials. I think that in the next half a year there would be more interesting and more explicit arrests of our officials. With every year larger and larger fish is caught. We are waiting for the next lot!

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