Another Victim Of Anti-Corruption Campaign Convicted :: Charter'97 :: News

City court of the Zavodsky region has sentenced director of the Joint-Stock Company “Stadium “Traktor” Vasil Alejnikau to five years of imprisonment with confiscation of the property and ban to take certain posts for some time. Vasil Alejnikau was detained in his office by the subdivision for economical crimes of the Kastrychnitsky district police department on November 15, 2001 when he was receiving a 1,000-dollar bribe from a representative of a firm “Boles”.

Vasil Alejnikau was one of the first victims of the mass anti-corruption campaign, initiated by Lukashenka soon after his re-election as a head of state. Almost at the same time directors of refrigerator plant “Atlant” and the head of the Belarusian Railway Viktar Rakhmanko were arrested. In the two weeks following their arrests 210 criminal cases were instigated by the prosecutors in Belarus. Imprisonments of 720 people were sanctioned, 71 verdicts were revoked, 15 of them because of too gentle punishment. In 2001 more than 20 thousand people were charged with economical crimes, including 400 directors of enterprises. The public prosecutor’s office has sent to court more than 44 thousand cases, which is twice as much as in 2000. 100 accusing verdicts were sent for reconsideration because of too gentle punishment.