Entrepreneur Sviatlana Dvaraninava on Indefinite Hunger-strike

06.03.2008. Tags: entrepreneurs, criminal persecution, hunger-strike.
Source: BelaPAN.

The entrepreneur Sviatlana Dvaraninava keeps the sixth indefinite hunger-strike in the women’s jail in Homel.

On 25 February she learned that the Supreme Court turned down the cassation appeal of her lawyer against the verdict of Kastrychitski district court of Vitsebsk, by which she was sentenced to 6,5 years of jail. Seeing no other ways to protect her legal rights, on 26 February the entrepreneur went on the sixth hunger-strike.

She states that she does it to ‘protest against gross violation of the criminal and the criminal process code by the investigation, the prosecutor’s offices and the courts of Vitsebsk oblast and Kastrychnitski district of Vitsebsk.’ She demands the abolishment of the unfair verdict.

Bear in mind that S.Dvaraninava was a co-owner of the Aquarius Ltd., which dealt with clothing manufacture and its wholesale. The enterprise faced economic problems and was not able to pay for the received goods. In 2004 a criminal case was brought against the entrepreneur under two article of the Criminal Code: article 209 (fraud) and 210 (theft with abuse of the official powers). In 2006 she was sentenced to 8 years of jail. Her lawyer appealed against the verdict, after which the term was reduced to 6,5 years.

The lawyer Natallia Tarasiuk considers this verdict unfair. ‘As it is clear from the case, she received the goods from one company and passed it to another. It means that he had no personal profit from it. Besides, the court failed to find cashing of any large sum of money, which could witness that the entrepreneur profited on this situation,’ Tarasiuk points.

The lawyer says that a more appropriate accusation to her client could be ‘evasion from fulfillment creditor’s duties’, but not fraud and theft, as it is stated in the case materials.