Vasil Shlyndzikau: In Order To Reduce Corruption, We Need To Change Entire System In Belarus

Now innocent people are sent to jail for the sake of the stars on the epaulettes.

Former Amkodor company head Vasil Shlyndzikau commented on the prosecution and release of chief engineer of Minsk Wheeled Tractor Plant Andrei Halavach.

We remind that recently, the Minsk Pershamaiski District Court acquitted Andrei Halavach, chief engineer of the Minsk Wheeled Tractor Plant, of all the charges brought against him.

The state prosecutor demanded 9 years' imprisonment for Halavach with confiscation of property.

The man had been in a pre-trial detention facility for more than four years, in the first case the court had already acquitted him, but he was again charged with a criminal case.

Vasil Shlyndzikau commented on the situation for Radio Racyja:

- The way the investigation was conducted and the way an innocent person was kept in custody for more than four years characterize the Belarusian system: if someone wants to get stars on their shoulder straps, they do not disdain it by any means.

Who do they destroy? First of all, those who work for this country, the creators. But the system is not interested in it, it is interested in reporting.

In general, Andrei Halavach's story is simply unique. Personally, I have not heard that such cases were somewhere else in the world. There's a knack to doing this - to keep a person behind bars for about five years. I believe that a man should not be kept in a pre-trial detention facility for economic crimes. Let him be under house arrest to be able to compensate for the damage if he is to blame. But why they destroy the economic elite of society?

- But the fight against corruption is under way...

- We need to change the system so that there are fewer corrupt people. There is little corruption in businesses when it comes to the private sector.

But there is enough corruption in state structures. And it turns out that the heads of state-owned enterprises are corrupt almost in one.

So in the near future, prosecutors will be treating patients, and they will also be raising the economy. Former Deputy Prosecutor General Arkhipau, who also went to jail and was then sent to head a collective farm, I think, knows very well what it means to manage the economy.