Convicted ex-presidential property manager recovering after surgery at home :: Charter'97 :: News

In a rare public comment, Galina Zhuravkova, former head of the Presidential Administration`s property management department sentenced to four years in prison, said she was still staying at home recovering after complicated surgery and continued denying her guilt.

Controversy mounted for weeks over Ms. Zhuravkova’s whereabouts after the latter did not attend her February trial and did not start serving her term in a correctional institution after being handed down the sentence.

“I have not hidden anywhere, my condition is as bad as it may be. I underwent surgery on February 7,” the ex-official said in an interview published by the private newspaper Narodnaya Volya.

“I can’t sit and have either to walk or lie after the surgery,” she explained.

Ms. Zhuravkova noted that she would unlikely have her sentence commuted in connection with an amnesty law expected to be enacted this spring.

The former presidential property manager said she is not going to flee Belarus. “I have nothing, not a cent left, my husband is in prison. Where can I go?”

Ms. Zhuravkova denied her guilt. “I was framed up. I had been working honestly for 26 years, there’s not a single person who would say anything bad about me,” she stressed.

Ms. Zhuravkova was found guilty of large-scale embezzlement through abuse of office under Part 4 of the Criminal Code`s Article 210. The Supreme Court`s panel also ordered the forfeiture of her property and barred the former property manager from office for five years following her release.