Predictable sentence: Court imposes fine on reputed Lohvinau bookstore


If the court decision comes into legal force, the bookstore will go bankrupt.

On January 9, the Economic Court in Minsk imposed a fine of 5 million rubles and confiscation of 961 million rubles from Lohvinau bookstore, the Belarusian Association of Journalists reports. The bookstore was charged with selling books without having registration of the Information Ministry.

According to the amended law on publishing and distribution of print products, the titles of print production distributors are supposed to be published on the website of the Ministry of Information. The distributors were to register before January 1, 2015.

Lohvinau bookstore had applied for registration eight times, and all the applications were turned down. The official papers explained the reasons: the applicants violated requirements of both form and contents of the application (January 24); the private unitary enterprise Lohvinau … located at Minsk, Nezalezhnasti ave. 37-a … for inexact indication of the place of registration of the legal entity (February 28); the size of the state duty for registration does not correspond to legal requirements (June 12); the electronic payment order provided does not meet the requirements of article 251, part 2 of the Code on Taxes (August 29); the type of premises was not indicated in the application form as required by a ruling of the Information Ministry (October 10); the incorrect information on postal code was provided (November 25).

Now the bookseller has to pay a fine for being unregistered, the sum equivalent to around 363 USD for the time being. But, the state also wants a compensation of 961 mln Belarusian rubles of the ‘illegal profit’, which is around 70,000 USD for the time being.

It is to be recalled that Lohvinau’s license as a publisher was withdrawn first. The grounds for the decision was that the publishing house Lohvinau had been the publisher of the Belarus Press Photo 2011 album. The photo album was acknowledged ‘extremist’ by Ashmiany district court in 2012, and neither cassation appeal nor public indignation managed to lift this decision.

Lohvinau was awarded with IPA Freedom to Publish Prize.

www.belsat.eu/en, via BAJ

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