Inquiry into Marinich’s case completed :: Charter'97 :: News

Investigators on Wednesday notified Mikhail Marinich’s defense that they had wrapped up the inquiry into the case. As Vera Stremkovskaya, the politician’s lawyer, told BelaPAN, the defense will study the case file and petition the Committee for State Security (KGB), the agency in charge of the probe, to drop the charges against Mr. Marinich.

If the appeal is rejected, the case will be sent to the Prosecutor General’s Office, which is to decide within the following 10 days whether or not the case should go to court, she said.

On November 5, Mr. Marinich was ultimately charged with a total of four criminal counts, including "stealing or damaging documents, stamps or seals" under Article 377 of the Criminal Code, "illegal actions regarding firearms, ammunition and explosives" under Article 295, and "theft through abuse of office, committed by an organized group, or grand theft" under Article 210.

On April 24, 2004, Mr. Marinich was reportedly pulled over by traffic police in Minsk who asked to see the contents of a suitcase he had in his possession. Mr. Marinich refused, but a plainclothes KGB officer who quickly arrived at the scene ordered him to open the suitcase, which was said to contain $90,000 in cash. The money was seized in the presence of witnesses, and Mr. Marinich was told that he should come to the KGB office two days later with documents proving that the money was his.

Mr. Marinich went to the KGB on April 26 and was put in its pretrial detention center on the same day.

In searches that followed, the KGB allegedly found stolen classified documents and two guns. Mr. Marinich`s sons indicated that they had recognized one of the guns, a gas pistol, as belonging to their father but refused to recognize the other one, insisting that it had been planted when their country house was burglarized not long before the arrest. According to Mr. Marinich`s lawyer, his client`s fingerprints were not present on the weapon discovered at the dacha.

In late September, Mr. Marinich, 64, had two new charges filed against him, of stealing classified government documents and office equipment temporarily used by the Delovaya Initsiativa (Business Initiative) association of which he was chairman.

Ms. Stremkovskaya dismisses the charges as unfounded, as, according to her, the classification had expired long ago and the equipment belongs to the US embassy, which has no complaints.

Mr. Marinich is also accused of stealing the association`s stamp and charter.

Mikhail Marinich, Belarus` minister of external economic relations in 1994-98, resigned as Belarus` Riga-based ambassador to Latvia, Estonia, and Finland in the summer of 2001 to run against Aleksandr Lukashenko in that fall`s presidential race. In his resignation letter to Foreign Minister Mikhail Khvostov, Marinich said that he planned to work against dictatorship and toward democratic changes.

The Belarusian leader reacted angrily to the very public defection, saying, "Don`t you remember you sang me songs and swore allegiance and loyalty? Now you have put yourself forward [as an opposing candidate]."

Mr. Marinich failed to get on the ballot when the central election commission ruled that he had not filed the required 100,000 voter signatures to be registered as a candidate. Mr. Marinich insisted that he had gathered the necessary signatures, accusing the Lukashenko government of forcing him out of the presidential race. In the city of Minsk, where he was mayor from 1990 to 1991, Mr. Marinich gathered more ballot access signatures than any other of the approximately 20 presidential aspirants, including the incumbent Lukashenko.
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