Accusation Against Chigir Is Crumbling to Pieces :: Charter'97 :: News

Monday saw another court session on criminal lawsuit, opened against the former country’s Prime Minister Mikhail Chigir. At the May 27 process the floor was given to the witnesses on the episode relating to the “Belagroprombank” and $1mln, transferred to the Canadian construction company. As you remember, during the May 20 session the representative of the plaintiffs – “Belagroprombank” – said, his words coming as a shock to the jury, that the bank has no complaints to Chigir.

Now the floor was given to the bankers-witnesses. Sergei Turovsky, who headed the bank before Chigir, explained why there arose the necessity to construct a new office. Previously the bank owned the headquarters inside the National Bank. However, it became commercial and grew in size, so that it could no longer fit in the old place. The National Bank asked them to move into an appropriate building. The Minsk city hall allotted money for the construction purposes in the Kalvariyskaya str, demanding that the building be at least 23 floors in height.

As concerns the second indictment, put forth against Chigir – tax-evasion – they charge him, as former head of the German “Geya” in Moscow with $66thsd of tax-evasion. Mikhail Chigir told the court in response that during his activities as head of the company he did not dwell in Belarus and didn’t have to pay taxes here. He referred to the norms of a then existing law “On levying income tax from citizens”, reading that a person can’t be made to pay taxes if he lived outside the country 183 days in a year. By the way, the tax inspection representative couldn’t object to this argument.