One and a half dozen people were involved in the case related to TUT.BY.
Oleksandr Lukashenko, who has been in power in Belarus since 1994, "pardoned" nine members of the team of the former opposition publication TUT.BY. TUT.BY co-founder Kyrylo Voloshyn said this in an interview published on April 19 by "Russian Service of Lithuanian Radio LRT".
According to him, the people were released after fulfilling two conditions: to repay the damages caused "it doesn't really matter by whom", in addition in double amount, and to write "sincere remorse" in the name of Lukashenka.
Voloshyn explained that the persons involved in the case were already under house arrest at the time of the pardon and can now leave Belarus.
In total, one and a half dozen people were involved in the TUT.BY case, two of them - editor-in-chief Maryna Zolotova and general director Lyudmila Chekina - remain in prison, a month ago they were sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment, the radio station notes.
Voloshyn emphasized that "quite a large ransom was paid for them, let's put it bluntly."
He believes that the pardoning of the employees of the publication was not due to any leniency, but because "the employees who left generally did not represent any particular threat to the regime, but the general director certainly did."
The interlocutor of the journalists said that Zolotov and Chekin did not plead guilty, but even a plea of guilty would not help them to be pardoned, since in their case the criminal case was conducted under the article on extremism, not on non-payment of taxes.
On May 18, 2021, Belarusian security forces visited the offices of the TUT.BY portal in Minsk and the regions, as well as the homes of its editors. The State Control Committee of Belarus announced that a criminal case has been opened against the officials of TUT.BY, the article is "evasion of the payment of taxes, fees in a particularly large amount."
After searches, security forces detained 13 employees of the TUT.BY portal. The General Prosecutor's Office of Belarus stated that the searches were related to "multiple violations of the law regarding the placement of prohibited information on the TUT.BY portal. The prosecutor's office published the statement on May 18 on YouTube.
The TUT.BY website domain is blocked, Voloshyn reported.
According to the SimilarWeb platform, TUT.BY was the most popular mass media in Belarus. TUT.BY actively covered the mass protests that began in Belarus after the presidential elections held on August 9, 2020.
In December of the same year, the portal was stripped of its media status due to four warnings it received for its materials.
