Radio active cesium ad food control

 Bandazhevsky: Chronology 

Experts believe government should tighten food quality control

 Minsk, 26 April 1999. Yury Bandazhevsky, rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute, believes that the government should tighten food quality control by setting a standard that would minimize the content of radioactive caesium. Dr. Bandazhevsky told BelaPAN that the current permissible level of caesium is so high that it allows this element to concentrate in the body and cause bad pathologies. The institute has proved radioactive caesium's adverse health effects as a result of research that has lasted for many years. Dr. Bandazhevsky called caesium a poison for human cells: it kills a cell first, then an organ and then the whole body. Research showed that cardiovascular, urinary and endocrine systems are especially vulnerable. Mr. Bandazhevsky believes that the government should pay attention to the problem and start acting to protect the population of the areas affected by the Chernobyl accident.

Valery Shevchuk, director of the Gomel branch of the Radiation Medicine Research Institute, criticized legislation outlining measures of social support of Chernobyl victims. Under Belarusian legislation, social assistance depends on the degree of contamination of the area where people live. But research showed that the health of people living in non-contaminated areas has been also deteriorating in the last several years.

 According to Mr. Shevchuk, people who were exposed to radiation, especially those evacuated from the 30-kilometer contaminated zone, live under psychological pressure, which causes changes in their mentality and somatic diseases in the long term. The assessment of about 1 million measurements taken after the accident showed that accumulated radiation doses added to current radiation intake by people living in the Gomel region increase the risk of cardiovascular system and thyroid pathologies, Mr. Shevchuk said.

Russia and Ukraine have stricter requirements regarding the content of radionuclides in food than Belarus

Minsk, 29 April 1999. Russia and Ukraine have stricter requirements regarding the content of radionuclides in food than Belarus, Ivan Kenik, chairman of the Committee on Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe, said at a seminar on Chernobyl issues in Minsk on April 28.

Mr. Kenik pointed out that radiation doses accumulated by the population of the Chernobyl-contaminated areas after 1986 should be registered, because they may be much higher than the safety level set by scientists. Mr. Kenik highly praised Belarusian scientists for developing measuring instruments, which have no analogues in the world.

He also commented on the conclusion of Yury Bandazhevsky, rector of the Gomel Medical Institute, that even small doses of cesium have harmful effects. The conclusion resulted from examining organs of dead people and animals. "I offered funds to the opponents of the professor, who tried to overturn the conclusion in theory, for carrying out alternative practical tests, but no one of them has accepted my offer," Mr. Kenik said.

Gomel State Medical Institute rector arrested on bribery charges

Minsk, 14 July 1999. Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute, and one of the deputy rectors have been arrested and accused of taking bribes in 1998 and 1999.

The Gomel Regional Prosecutor's Office has instituted criminal proceedings on the basis of evidence collected by the local branch of the Organized Crime and Corruption Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

If convicted, the arrestees may face 8 to 15 years in prison and forfeiture of property.

Gomel Medical Institute rector's detention extended for 30 days

Minsk, 19 July 1999. Professor Yury Bandazhevsky's detention has been extended for 30 days, although no charges were brought against the rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute after his first three days of detention (term for keeping suspects of a crime in detention without warrant).

On July 13, Dr. Bandazhevsky was arrested on suspicion of bribery. The regional prosecutor, who instituted the proceedings, refuses to release any details. A well-informed source reports that Dr. Bandazhevsky had a heart trouble upon arrest and was repeatedly given urgent medical aid.

Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov, who was arrested hours earlier than Dr. Bandazhevsky, has already been charged with bribery.

Health minister dismisses arrested Gomel Medical Institute rector

Minsk, 30 July 1999. Igor Zelenkevich, the Belarusian minister of health, has sacked Yury Bandazhevsky, rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute, who was arrested on suspicion of corruption on July 13.

Vladimir Ravkov, vice rector of the institute, was arrested the same day and charged with bribery later. Formal charges have not yet been brought against the head of the institute, but he is still held in detention. The case, which was instituted by the Gomel Regional Prosecutor's Office, is soon to be handed over to the Procurator General's Office or the Belarusian Military Prosecutor's Office, because Mr. Ravkov is a military serviceman. A reliable source said that there is no evidence against Mr. Ravkov. Prosecutors just have police information that an intermediary, a very old woman, allegedly handed Mr. Ravkov $2,500. They also have no evidence to prove that the woman acted as an intermediary. Dr. Bandazhevsky is reported to have been arrested after Mr. Ravkov was questioned. The latter has reportedly retracted his testimony.

The Regional Prosecutor's Office has been denying Dr. Bandazhevsky's wife meetings with her husband.

Professor Bandazhevsky's wife claims her husband was arrested because his view of Chernobyl aftereffects was at variance with prevalent opinionMinsk, 3 August 1999. Professor Bandazhevsky was arrested because he "has always been frank, as every doctor should be, about aftereffects of the Chernobyl catastrophe,” especially about the danger of small radiation doses, reads an open letter sent by Dr. Bandazhevsky's wife to Belarusian newspapers.

Yury Bandazhevsky, rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute, was arrested on suspicion of corruption on July 13. His wife, who has been denied meetings with the detainee, claims that his research "arouses hostility in our country," as, according to her, if her husband's position was accepted, the government would have to "rescue people" living in radioactively contaminated areas, which would require "systematic efforts and enormous amounts of money." Mrs. Bandazhevsky expresses confidence that "it was in the interests of certain people to dishonor my husband and his activities." She stresses that her husband has spent over three weeks in jail "in unspeakably severe conditions,” but no formal charge has been brought against him. She calls on Dr. Bandazhevsky's colleagues, all medical researchers and practitioners to come out in support of her husband.

Former rector of the Gomel Medical Institute formally charged with taking a bribeMinsk, 5 August 1999. The former rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute has been formally charged with taking a bribe under Article 169 Part 3 of the Belarusian Criminal Code. Prof. Yury Bandazhevsky will be held in custody awaiting trial.

Dr. Bandazhevsky was arrested on July 13. Earlier, police arrested Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov, who was also charged with taking a bribe. Police searched Dr. Bandazhevsky's apartment, garage and office but found nothing that could be used as evidence. A large sum of money in hard currency was found in Mr. Ravkov's apartment.

Investigators told BelaPAN that they had found enough evidence to prove Prof. Bandazhevsky's wrongdoing. They showed examination tests corrected by someone allegedly to help some entrants to pass exams. The investigators claimed they had discovered many forged tests.

The investigators alleged that parents of some students had admitted giving from $2,000 to 4,000 in bribes to ensure that their children are admitted to the institute. They claimed that all that could not have happened without Bandazhevsky being aware of it.

Police said that they would not press for the expulsion of students, whose examination tests are now used as evidence in the case.

Bandazhevsky's lawyer says the authorities hamper his activities

Minsk, 9 August 1999. Lawyer Aleksandr Baranov says that the authorities prevent him from properly defending his client, Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, ex-head of the Gomel State Medical Institute, who was indicted for bribery on August 4.

On August 6, according to Mr. Baranov, he attempted to meet with his client in prison but was told that Dr. Bandazhevsky was no longer there. After the same happened on August 9, the lawyer filed an enquiry with the Procurator General's Office and the Gomel Regional Prosecutor's Office about his client's whereabouts.

Gomel Regional Prosecutor Vladimir Gavrilchik told BelaPAN that Dr. Bandazhevsky might have been taken to Mogilyov, where some of his students are known to reside. If so, Mr. Baranov says, then the investigators acted in violation of regulations requiring them to inform the lawyer about all their actions involving his client.

In the opinion of Mr. Baranov, the police are trying to avoid his presence, which makes him wonder about investigative methods applied to his client.

Experts link Professor Bandazhevsky's arrest to his conclusions about the efficiency of some Chernobyl-related research programs

Minsk, 11 August 1999. Some experts link the recent arrest of Professor Yury Bandazhevsky on corruption charges to a report drawn by the former head of the Gomel Medical Institute after examining the efficiency of the Research Institute for Radiation Medicine and Endocrinology.

Dr. Bandazhevsky did a review of a project named "The Study of the Impact of Radiological Effects of the Chernobyl Catastrophe on Human Health. The Study of the Methods and Means of Disease Diagnosis, Treatment and Prevention.” The project's budget totaled 13,024 million rubels. He also evaluated two more projects, totaling 1.5 billion and 2 billion rubels.

"The allocation of sizable funds for Chernobyl-related research programs did not lead to results significant for the national economy or ensuring the proper protection of the population's health," concluded Dr. Bandazhevsky in his report. He also criticized the leaders of the institute for their "absolute lack of control over research planning" and "irresponsible approach to the use of financial reasources."

Yury Bandazhevsky, who holds a doctor’s degree in medicine, was arrested on suspicion of corruption on July 13. His wife believes that "it was in the interests of certain people to dishonor my husband and his activities." In her open letter to Belarusian newspapers, Mrs. Bandazhevsky said that her husband was arrested because he "has always been frank, as every doctor should be, about aftereffects of the Chernobyl catastrophe,” especially about the danger of small radiation doses.

Professor Bandazhevsky's detention results in his hospitalization in critical condition

Minsk, 21 August 1999. It has become known that Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, the former rector of the Gomel Medical Institute who was arrested on July 13 on suspicion of bribery, has repeatedly been in critical condition since jailed. A formal charge was brought against him on August 4. According to the arrest warrant signed by the procurator general, Dr. Bandazhevsky was to be transferred from a temporary holding facility (IVS) to a pretrial detention center (SIZO). However, his lawyer did not find him at either the IVS or SIZO on Friday, August 5, and on Monday, August 9. That gave rise to rumors that Bandazhevsky had disappeared like former Interior Minister Yury Zakharenko and former National Bank Chairwoman Tamara Vinnikova had done before. The Regional Prosecutor's Office denied the rumors, saying that the accused had been taken to Mogilyov for investigative purposes. However, Dr. Bandazhevsky has not been brought back to Gomel since then.

It has now become known from a reliable source that in an attempt to prevent possible accusations of using physical force against Dr. Bandazhevsky, investigators hid the detainee in Mogilyov's IVS but had to place him in the regional hospital after he lost consciousness in the cell. Doctors reportedly diagnosed bleeding duodenum ulcer, second-degree hypertension, coronary insufficiency and depression. Since the state of the patient did not change for the better, Dr. Bandazhevsky was transported to Minsk, to a hospital belonging to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, at the end of this week. BelaPAN has failed to obtain any official comment on the subject.

Former Gomel Medical Institute rector facing bribery charge appeals to the Belarusian leader for help

Minsk, 22 August 1999. Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, who was arrested on July 13 on suspicion of bribery, has sent a letter to Aleksandr Lukashenko. In the message, the former rector of the Gomel Medical Institute briefs the Belarusian leader on the history of this educational establishment and research done in the institute regarding the impact of the Chernobyl accident on human health. Dr. Bandazhevsky mentions attempts to close down the institute, problems in relations with the Ministry of Health, which became acuter after the rector revealed "facts of inefficient use of funds provided under Chernobyl programs at the Radiation [Medicine and Endocrinology] Research Institute of the Ministry of Health". Dr. Bandazhevsky says that his idea, which was earlier made known to the head of state, to locate the above-mentioned research institute in Gomel, "closer to the problem", was not welcomed by the Ministry of Health. "Many of the ministry's leaders disliked this," writes the professor, which, in his opinion, resulted in repeated inspections of his institution. However, Dr. Bandazhevsky adds, the inspections "revealed nothing bad".

The former rector, who was dismissed by Minister of Health Igor Zelenkevich shortly after his arrest, continues, "In the last few years, an enormous number of anonymous letters were fabricated against me. Their meaning did not correspond to the facts." Dr. Bandazhevsky mentions a letter addressed to Viktor Sheiman, state secretary of the Security Council, which reportedly accused the rector of "bribery and high treason".

As regards the charge that he faces, Dr. Bandazhevsky says, "I categorically deny that I took any bribes from anyone. I have nothing to do with what the investigating agency try to charge me with. It is known that Mr. Ravkov [the vice rector of the Gomel Medical Institute who was arrested a day before Bandazhevsky and whose testimony resulted in the rector's arrest] has retracted his testimony against me."

Dr. Bandazhevsky expresses surprise at the fact that "at first an individual goes to jail and only then evidence of his guilt begins being looked for." There are reports that the investigators still lack any substantial evidence against the former rector. Dr. Bandazhevsky complains about a sharp deterioration of his health and asks the Belarusian leader for help.

Wife of former Gomel State Medical Institute vice rector says investigators used psychotropic substances to extort confession from her husband

Minsk, 25 August 1999. Natalya Ravkov, the wife of the former vice rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute who faces a bribery charge, has told BelaPAN that investigators used psychotropic substances to extort a confession from her husband.

According to Mrs. Ravkov, her husband told her during their recent meeting that investigators had used to take him for 888interrogation before lunch and bring back to his cell by the morning of the next day. He was thus was left without food because the detention center's inmates have only one meal a day. Mr. Ravkov told his wife that investigators had given him water during interrogation and after drinking he could not express his thoughts and did not even remember well what had happened. Mr. Ravkov told his wife that he had retracted his evidence against Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, the institute's rector.

Mrs. Ravkov have sent complaints to the Procurator General's Office, the Gomel Regional Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of Defense, as Mr. Ravkov is a military serviceman.

After Mr. Ravkov's arrest, investigators searched twice his apartment. His wife says that she handed them $14,500, but they were looking for certain dollar bills. Mr. Ravkov's lawyer intends to demand the money back because the family can prove that it was earned legally.

Wives questioned in Bandazhevsky-Ravkov case

Minsk, 27 August 1999. Galina Bandazhevsky and Natalya Ravkov have been questioned in connection with the bribery charges against their husbands, Yury Bandazhevsky and Vladimir Ravkov. Before their arrest Messrs. Bandazhevsky and Ravkov served as rector and vice rector, respectively, of the Gomel State Medical Institute.

The wives were questioned by Ivan Branchel, deputy chief of the Investigative Department of the Prosecutor General's Office, who is in charge of the investigation. According to Mmes. Bandazhevsky and Ravkov, he wanted to know how a letter addressed by Dr. Bandazhevsky to Aleksandr Lukashenko had managed to reach the Presidential Administration, from where it was forwarded to the Procurator General's Office. Mr. Branchel also asked the wives what grounds they had to insist on their husbands' innocence and how they had learned about nightlong interrogations of their husbands.

Mr. Branchel himself declined to release any details of the investigation to BelaPAN.

Gomel Medical Institute head believes that the Bandazhevsky-Ravkov case will collapse in court

Minsk, 1 September 1999. The charges brought against Rector Yury Bandazhevsky and Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov of the Gomel State Medical Institute will collapse in court, said Yevgeny Sokolovsky, the replacement of Mr. Bandazhevsky, at a general meeting of the staff on September 1.

The meeting was attended by Deputy Minister of Health Vladimir Orekhovsky, Valery Akhlestin, deputy chairman of the Gomel Regional Executive Committee, and Nikolai Krysenko, chief of the Gomel Regional Health Department.

Mr. Sokolovsky called on those present to maintain the institute's good reputation through faultless and professional work and not to give in to blackmail and moral pressure on anybody's part. He explained that Messrs. Bandazhevsky and Ravkov were suspended from their posts pending investigation into charges of bribery, not fired.

Mr. Sokolovsky assured those present that the Ministry of Health and the Gomel Regional Executive Committee had no intention to close the institute. "While the Chernobyl problem exists, the medical institute will keep working in Gomel," he stressed.

Gomel Medical Institute’s faculty petition for freeing its rector

Minsk, 2 August 1999. The faculty of the Gomel State Medical Institute have petitioned Belarusian Prosecutor General Oleg Bozhelko to release the institute's Rector Yury Bandazhevsky from detention on his written pledge not to flee from prosecution.

Professor Bandazhevsky was arrested on July 13 on suspicion of bribery. The lecturers suggest that Mr. Bandazhevsky should be released because of his poor health. They also demand that the investigation be conducted in strict accordance with the law.

A formal charge was brought against Dr. Bandazhevsky on August 4. His health deteriorated shortly after that and he was hospitalized in Mogilyov. Doctors reportedly diagnosed bleeding duodenum ulcer, second-degree hypertension, coronary insufficiency and depression. Since the state of the patient did not change for the better, Dr. Bandazhevsky was transported to Minsk, to a hospital belonging to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he is undergoing treatment at present.

There are reports that investigators still lack any substantial evidence against Dr. Bandazhevsky.

Jailed Gomel Medical Institute rector's petition for release until trial rejected by Prosecutor General's Office

Minsk, 15 October 1999. The Prosecutor General's Office has rejected Professor Yury Bandazhevsky's petition that he be released until trial on his written pledge not to flee.

The rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute was arrested on July 13 on bribery charges. The reply that came from the Prosecutor General's Office said that an active investigation was in progress and Dr. Bandazhevsky's release could impede it. However, according to Dr. Bandazhevsky's family, October 4 – the day of bringing the formal charge – was the last time he saw the investigators.

The issue of Dr. Bandazhevsky's release is expected to emerge again on November 30, when his authorized pre-trial detention expires and should be either terminated or extended. However, Dr. Bandazhevsky's family say, the jailed professor was told that the investigation would be extended by four or five months.

New rector to be appointed to the Gomel State Medical Institute in place of Bandazhevsky

Minsk, 10 November 1999. A new rector will soon be appointed to the Gomel State Medical Institute, said Deputy Health Minister Vladimir Orekhovsky while visiting Gomel on November 10.

Yury Bandazhevsky, rector of the institute, was arrested on a bribery charge on July 13 and has since been held in pretrial detention. Earlier this fall the institute's staff was told that Dr. Bandazhevsky was suspended from his post, not fired. His functions have been performed by First Vice Rector Yevgeny Sokolovsky.

In the absence of a rector, said Mr. Orekhovsky, the institute is unable to operate properly, so "candidates are now being selected.” The deputy minister refused to comment on the Bandazhevsky case, saying the investigation was still in progress.

Bandazhevsky replaced as Gomel State Medical Institute rector

Minsk, 25 November 1999. Aleksandr Lukashenko has given his consent to appointing Sergei Zhavoronok, director of the Vitebsk branch of the Belarusian Clinical Research Institute for Radiation Medicine and Endocrinology, to head the Gomel State Medical Institute.

The appointment is expected to be confirmed by a special Ministry of Health resolution. There are reports that Mr. Zhavoronok has already visited Gomel and got introduced to local public health officials and to the institute's staff.

The former rector, Yury Bandazhevsky, was arrested on a bribery charge on July 13 and has since been held in pretrial detention. Earlier this fall the institute's staff was told that Dr. Bandazhevsky was suspended from his post, not fired. His functions have been performed by First Vice Rector Yevgeny Sokolovsky.

Russian human rights activists urge Belarus' prosecutor general to release ex-rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute

Minsk, 7 December 1999. Russian human rights activists have urged Belarusian Prosecutor General Oleg Bozhelko to release from pre-trial detention Yury Bandazhevsky, an ex-rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute. Dr. Bandazhevsky has been held in jail for six months now. He has been charged with taking a bribe when he headed the institute.

The Khartiya-97 (Charter '97) human rights group has reported that the letter to Mr. Bozhelko has been signed by Aleksei Yablokov, president of Russia's Environmental Policy Center, and Aleksei Simonov, head of the Glasnost Defense Foundation. The letter says that the Russian and Belarusian public would welcome Dr. Bandazhevsky's release before the signing of a Belarusian-Russian union treaty scheduled for December 8.

The Russian human rights activists believe that the charges against Dr. Bandazhevsky, an expert in assessing health effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe, were fabricated, and that the main reason for his arrest was "Bandazhevsky's warning about the medical and genetic danger of consuming food contaminated with radionuclides" and his opposition to high-ranking officials who claim that Chernobyl contamination no longer represents a serious danger.

They also believe that the Belarusian authorities disliked "Bandazhevsky’s statements condemning the embezzlement of the Belarusian taxpayers’ money allocated for the Chernobyl program.”

"Prof. Bandazhevsky, basing his statements on colossal scientific material collected by him, absolutely correctly speaks about the danger to Belarus' national gene pool," says the letter. "This information is vitally important to Russia, Ukraine and other countries, affected by the Chernobyl catastrophe and other similar catastrophes."

Prosecutors call on students to confess giving bribes for being admitted to the Gomel State Medical Institute

Minsk, 13 December 1999. The period given by prosecutors to students to confess to giving bribes in order to be admitted to the Gomel State Medical Institute expired on December 10. The appeal to students was published in the newspapers by a team conducting an investigation into corruption charges leveled against Yury Bandazhevsky, the former rector of the institute. The team guaranteed students who report of their own free will that they will not be prosecuted and will be allowed to continue studying in the institute. The first appeal was published in the press immediately after Dr. Bandazhevsky's arrest in July this year, but no one responded. Later the investigators published a second appeal.

The heads of the institute have told BelaPAN that they knew no students who had admitted giving bribes. But the Regional Department on Organized Crime and Corruption said that it had received information from students, although few students reported.

Relatives of the institute's former official facing corruption charges told BelaPAN that the investigators have no evidence to substantiate the charges.

Research institute director appeal for support for his Chernobyl study

Minsk, 16 December 1999. Research conducted by Prof. Yury Bandazhevsky, a morbid anatomist, showed that after receiving a radiation dose of more than 50 Becquerels per one kilogram of weight, the human immune system, liver and heart undergo pathological changes, Vasily Nesterenko, director of Belrad, Belarus' non-state radiation medicine institute, told a conference in Minsk on December 16.

Dr. Nesterenko, a corresponding member of the Belarusian National Academy of Sciences, was speaking at a conference dedicated to Gennady Karpenko, a prominent scientist and politician who died suddenly last year.

Dr. Nesterenko worked together with Dr. Bandazhevsky, an ex-rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute arrested earlier this year on a charge of bribery, to study the influence of the Chernobyl accident's aftereffects on people's health.

Dr. Bandazhevsky suggested that the pathologies are caused by a disease which he called "nuclear AIDS.” Radionuclides weaken the immune system, accumulate in the liver and heart changing their electric conduction, cause eye cataract, tachycardia, and liver pathologies, concluded Dr. Bandazhevsky in his study.

One month before his arrest, Dr. Bandazhevsky published an article in the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, citing some results of his study among children in the Gomel region, Dr. Nesterenko said. Soon after the publication of the article, his colleague warned him, "You have signed your death sentence" by the article, said Dr. Nesterenko.

According to him, about 2 million people currently live in radioactively contaminated areas in Belarus, including 500,000 children. With equal radiation levels, children 5-6 times more sensitive to the exposure than adults, probably because they consume more milk and dairy products. Belrad examined 25,000 children in several years.

Dr. Nesterenko said that pectin tablets, which can be produced in Belarus, halve the radiation dose in one month. He pointed out that children in contaminated areas badly need pectin tablets because the level of radiation there often exceeds legally allowed radiation exposure. He suggested that the Gennady Karpenko International Association support his studies into the health effects of radiation on children and opportunities of their social and psychological rehabilitation.

Bandazhevsky released from pretrial custody

Minsk, 28 December 1999. The prosecutor general has authorized Professor Yury Bandazhevsky's release from pretrial detention on his own recognizance.

Th ex-rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute was arrested on July 13 on a charge of bribetaking. His case is being investigated by the Prosecutor General's Office and the Organized Crime and Corruption Committee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The prosecution claims Dr. Bandazhevsky and his gang took a total of about $200,000 from applicants in exchange for admission to the institute. However, the professor was not caught red-handed, and no money was found after his arrest. The case is based on testimony that, some say, was forced out of students and their parents.

Dr. Bandazhevsky's supporters link his arrest to his position on Chernobyl issues. Dr. Bandazhevsky accused the government of neglecting and concealing the harmful impact of small radiation doses on people residing in contaminated areas and on the nation's gene pool as a whole.

Investigation into bribery case involving Gomel medical institute's former rector to be completed in January 

Minsk, 31 December 1999. The former rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute, Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, who face a criminal charge of bribery, is now staying at home after spending five months and two weeks in jail. He was released from pretrial detention on December 27 on his written pledge not to flee. Speaking to a BelaPAN correspondent Dr. Bandazhevsky declined to comment on the reasons for his arrest and release. A representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office gave to understand that pretrial detention had been changed for the pledge as a result of extensive coverage of the incident in the press and numerous appeals in defense of the prominent medical expert by international human rights organizations.

Apart from Dr. Bandazhevsky, three former Gomel State Medical Institute employees are now under investigation in connection with the bribery case. Two of them are being held in jail. Investigators allege that the four formed an "organized group of bribe-takers at the medical institute.” The prosecution claims that Mr. Bandazhevsky and his gang took a total of about $200,000 in bribes from applicants in exchange for admission to the institute. However, the rector was not caught red-handed, and no money was found after his arrest. The charge is based on testimony which some say was forced out of students and their parents. Prosecutors called on students to confess giving bribes for being admitted to the institute. Such appeals were published in newspapers. The prosecutors guaranteed the students who would report of their own free will that they would not be prosecuted and would be allowed to continue studying in the institute.

According to the institute’s heads that they knew no students who had admitted giving bribes. But the Regional Department on Organized Crime and Corruption said that it had received information from students, although few students reported.

There are reports that the investigation of the case is expected to be completed in January.

Bandazhevsky unlikely to stand trial until April

Minsk, 2 February 2000. The investigation of the Gomel State Medical Institute bribery case is unlikely to be completed until April, says Vyacheslav Terekhovich, who supervises the investigation at the Procurator General's Office.

In July 1999, Rector Yury Bandazhevsky, Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov and several lecturers were accused of taking bribes from applicants in exchange for admission to the institute. The defendants also include several parents, who allegedly bribed the institute officials to get their children through the exams.

The prosecution claims Mr. Bandazhevsky and his "gang" took a total of about $200,000 from applicants in exchange for admission to the institute. However, the professor was not caught red-handed, and no money was found after his arrest. The case is based on testimony that, some say, was forced out of students and their parents.

Mr. Bandazhevsky's supporters link his arrest to his position on Chernobyl issues. The rector accused the government of neglecting and concealing the harmful impact of small radiation doses on people residing in contaminated areas and on the nation's gene pool as a whole.

Mr. Ravkov was the first one to be arrested. Mr. Bandazhevsky was charged on the basis of the vice rector's testimony, which Mr. Ravkov later retracted. Mr. Ravkov's wife says the investigators lost all interest in her husband after Mr. Bandazhevsky's arrest. According to her, he has not even been interrogated since then. Mr. Ravkov's petition for release until trial on health grounds has been rejected by the prosecution.

Mr. Terekhovich declined to go into details of the case, saying there would be no comment until the investigation was over.

Investigation of the Gomel State Medical Institute bribery case extended by 2 months

Minsk, 12 April 2000. The investigation of the Gomel State Medical Institute bribery case has been extended by 2 months, Vyacheslav Terekhovich, who supervises the investigation at the Procurator General's Office, told BelaPAN on April 12.

On July 12, 1999, the Gomel Regional Prosecutor's Office charged Yury Bandazhevsky, then the institute's rector, and Vladimir Ravkov, vice rector, with taking bribes from applicants in exchange for guaranteeing success at entrance examinations. Mr. Terekhovich said that 18 institute employees were implicated in the scandal. He said that the institute had a criminal ring taking bribes in exchange for admission. Mr. Ravkov was arrested on July 11 and has since been held in jail. Three suspects were released after they spent several months in pre-trial detention. Mr. Terekhovich said that they had admitted to their complicity in the crime and agreed to cooperate with investigators.

The officer declined to comment on Prosecutor General Oleg Bozhelko's recent statement that the Bandazhevsky case would not go to trial.

Inquiry into corruption at Gomel State Medical Institute to be completed by fall, chief investigator says

Minsk, 12 July 2000. The inquiry into corruption at the Gomel State Medical Institute will be completed by fall, Vyacheslav Terekhovich, senior investigator for especially serious cases with the Procurator General's Office who is in charge of the case, told BelaPAN.

Bribery proceedings against Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, rector of the institute, and Vladimir Ravkov, vice rector, were instituted on July 12, 1999. The case is believed by some to have a political background because Dr. Bandazhevsky used to criticize the government a lot for neglecting Chernobyl problems.

In all, according to Mr. Terekhovich, the case involves about 25 individuals. Some are accused of giving or taking bribes while others of active complicity. Bribery is a serious crime, and bribery suspects are normally ineligible for "release until trial," Mr. Terekhovich said. However, Mr. Ravkov remains the only one in pretrial detention after twelve months.

According to Mr. Terekhovich, the former vice rector has been repeatedly offered a "unique opportunity" to admit his guilt and be released. The investigator rules out the possibility that Mr. Ravkov may have nothing to confess. His detention has recently been extended until September 12.

Jailed medical institute administrator complains to Lukashenko about brutal investigation

Minsk, 4 August 2000. Vladimir Ravkov, the jailed vice rector of Gomel State Medical Institute, has sent a letter to Aleksandr Lukashenko, claiming that his original testimony against himself and his boss, Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, was the result of torture and threats.

Bribery proceedings against Mr. Ravkov, Rector Bandazhevsky and 15 others were instituted back in July 1999. Mr. Ravkov remains the only one in detention, while the trial is nowhere in view. The case is believed by some to have a political background, as Mr. Bandazhevsky used to criticize the government a lot for neglecting Chernobyl problems.

Mr. Ravkov says in his letter that investigators interrogated him 14-16 hours a day, denied him food and sleep and threatened to harm his wife and daughter. One time, according to the letter, they "put some very toxic psychotropic drug in my glass of water," making him "completely disoriented."

On the following day, Mr. Ravkov says, doctors diagnosed him with toxic hepatitis, and there are documents to prove it.

In addition, he continues, the investigators keep ignoring his grave health even after ECG testing gave evidence of a microfocal heart attack.

Mr. Ravkov says that Prosecutor General Oleg Bozhelko has dismissed his story as far-fetched and requests Belarus' supreme leader to look into his case.

Director of radiation safety institute accuses health ministry of ignoring research about danger of radiation to children's healthMinsk, 9 August 2000. Vasily Nesterenko, director of the Minsk-based non-state Radiation Safety Institute "Belrad", has accused the Belarusian Ministry of Health of ignoring researchers' conclusions about the danger of small doses of radiation to children's health.

As Dr. Nesterenko explained to BelaPAN, the ministry has disregarded Belrad's recommendation to include in radiation safety standards the dose limit of 0.3 mSv, above which treatment and preventive measures should be taken to protect children.

Dr. Nesterenko said that Belarus has an "archaic and doubtful" catalogue of accumulated radiation doses on the country's territory. According to him, the Ministry of Health proposed new draft catalogues in 1998 and 1999, but Belrad rejected them after it found that doses mentioned there were 3 to 8 times lower than the real ones. The Belrad director pointed out that the ministry had used incorrect methods to assess the doses. Dr. Nesterenko said that the 1998 version of the catalogue listed only 128 of 3,668 villages contaminated as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, and the 1999 version only 850.

In 1999, Belrad rejected new maximum allowed levels of cesium-137 in meat and milk, which were proposed by the ministry. Dr. Nesterenko said that the levels were 2 to 3 times higher than the same standards in Russia.

The Belrad director said that Yury Bandazhevsky, the former rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute, who is currently under investigation on a bribery charge, conducted research into the effects of radiation doses on children's health and drew an important conclusion that a cesium-137 dose above 50 Bq per kilogram of a child's weight causes serious pathologies. Dr. Bandazhevsky's research showed a direct effect of radiation doses on children's health, Dr. Nesterenko said.

Many believe Dr. Bandazhevsky's research to be a reason for the criminal charges against him.

In its research, Belrad uses a human body radiation meter, and the health ministry claims that the institute should obtain a special license for using the equipment. Under Belarusian regulations, a license from the Ministry of Health is necessary for medical research.

However, Belrad argues that such kind of research can be done under the license that it received from the Ministry on Emergency Situations. Dr. Nesterenko said that he had to appeal to Aleksandr Lukashenko and the international community to prevent the termination of the project. The project's closure would significantly undermine independent experts' efforts to protect Belarusian children's health.

Belrad was founded by the Belarusian National Academy of Sciences and the Belarusian Peace Fund in October 1990 with the support of the scientist and human rights defender Andrei Sakharov, Belarusian writer Ales Adamovich and chess champion Anatoly Karpov. Belrad has 370 stations for measuring the level of radionuclides in food all over Belarus.

Gomel Medical Institute vice rector confronted with new charge

Minsk, 15 August 2000. Prosecutors have rewritten charges against 18 officials of the Gomel State Medical Institute, most of whom are accused of taking bribes.

Some officials have been charged with giving bribes and mediating in bribe deals.

Among the accused are Yury Bandazhevsky, the former rector of the institute, and former Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov.

An official at the Prosecutor General's Office told BelaPAN that the charges were reviewed in order to specify some details of the incriminated offenses or add new counts.

Mr. Ravkov's lawyer, Dmitry Ivanishko, said that his client had been confronted with a new charge -- illegal possession of cold steel. According to the lawyer, investigators claim to have found a knife in his client's Nissan Premiera car several moths ago.

The lawyer dismissed the accusation as absurd. He said that neither Mr. Ravkov nor his relatives knew the whereabouts of the car since the vice rector's arrest on July 12, 1999.

Police showed the car to Mr. Ravkov's wife, Natalya, on October 19, 1999 after her urgent requests. Natalya says that the car was damaged. The police ordered the seizure of the car on the same day but have not yet made a list of belongings that were found in it.

Mr. Ravkov is the only one of the 18 accused in detention.

The case is believed by some to have a political background, as Dr. Bandazhevsky used to criticize the government for neglecting Chernobyl problems.

Jailed Gomel State Medical Institute vice rector goes on hunger strike

Minsk, 27 October 2000. Vladimir Ravkov, the former vice rector of Gomel State Medical Institute who faces a bribery charge and has been awaiting trial in Gomel’s detention center for more than 15 months, has gone on a hunger strike, protesting against repeated denials of medical assistance.

As Dmitry Ivanishko, Mr. Ravkov’s lawyer, told BelaPAN, his client's health has deteriorated in the last two months, he has cardiac rhythm disturbances and prison guards often had to call ambulance for him.

On October 14, the jail doctor submitted a report to the chief of the detention center, Viktor Vetoshkin, suggesting that Mr. Ravkov be transferred to hospital. Mr. Vetoshkin approached Vyacheslav Terekhovich, chief of the investigators in charge of the case, but he replied that Mr. Ravkov had no diseases that could prevent him from being held in jail.

The lawyer believes that the doctor could send Mr. Ravkov to the hospital without asking the investigator's permission, but is afraid to do so because the case has a political background.

Mr. Terekhovich has said frankly that Mr. Ravkov is being held in jail because he refuses to confess unlike the other 17 people charged in connection with the scandal, who he said "have made a clean breast of guilt" and are awaiting trial out of jail.

Mr. Ivanishko believes that investigators have no evidence to back allegations against Mr. Ravkov.

Bribery proceedings against Mr. Ravkov, Rector Yury Bandazhevsky and 16 others were instituted in July 1999. Mr. Ravkov remains the only one in pretrial detention, while the trial is still out of sight.

Gomel State Medical Institute vice rector transferred from Gomel's detention center to jail in Minsk

Minsk, 2 December 2000. Vladimir Ravkov, the former vice rector of Gomel State Medical Institute who has been held in pretrial detention for more than 14 months, has been transferred from Gomel's SIZO (pretrial detention center) to the SIZO on Volodarskogo Street in Minsk. His wife Natalya believes that this has been done to delay the medical treatment of the detainee, who faces a bribery charge.

Mrs. Ravkov says that Vyacheslav Terekhovich, chief of the Prosecutor General's Office investigative group in charge of the bribery scandal at the medical institute, told her about the transfer of her husband to Minsk as his realization that the detainee does need medical treatment. Mrs. Ravkov believes that the transfer was revenge for her numerous complaints about investigators' illegal methods.

The wife has been pressing for hospitalizing her husband for half a year since the detainee had a heart attack. This past fall the condition of his health deteriorated to such a degree that even the SIZO doctor took alarm. The detainee was taken to the Gomel regional heart center. The center's doctors diagnosed serious heart diseases and recommended hospitalization. However, according to the chief of the Gomel SIZO, Viktor Vetoshkin, doctors' recommendation is not an order for him and if the detainee dies, an internal inquiry will be conducted and those guilty will be punished.

As Dmitry Ivanishko, Mr. Ravkov's lawyer, told BelaPAN, his client's health has deteriorated in the last two months, he has cardiac rhythm disturbances and prison guards often had to call ambulance for him.

On October 14, the jail doctor submitted a report to the SIZO chief, Mr. Vetoshkin, suggesting that Mr. Ravkov be hospitalized. The SIZO chief approached Mr. Terekhovich who reportedly replied that Mr. Ravkov had no diseases that could prevent him from being held in jail.

The lawyer believes that the doctor could send Mr. Ravkov to the hospital without asking the investigator's permission, but is afraid to do so because the case has a political background.

Mr. Terekhovich has said frankly that Mr. Ravkov is being held in jail because he refuses to confess unlike the other 17 people charged in connection with the scandal, who, according to the investigator, "have made a clean breast of guilt" and are awaiting trial out of jail.

Bribery proceedings against Mr. Ravkov, Rector Yury Bandazhevsky and 16 others were instituted in July 1999. Mr. Ravkov remains the only one in pretrial detention, while the trial is still out of sight.

Investigators claim that Bandazhevsky and his "gang" took a total of about $200,000 in bribes from applicants. However, the suspects were never caught red-handed. The case is based on testimony that, some say, was forced out of students and their parents.

As Aleksandr Baranov, the lawyer of the former rector, told BelaPAN, "investigators have failed to find evidence to show how Bandazhevsky could influence applicants' marks at entrance examinations." As for the charge of power abuse, the lawyer considers it senseless as it was brought for the same alleged offense. Mr. Baranov believes that the prosecution wants to use this charge if the main charge, bribery, is rejected in court.

Jailed Gomel Medical Institute vice rector transferred to interior ministry's hospital

Minsk, 7 December 2000. Vladimir Ravkov, the former vice rector of Gomel State Medical Institute who has been held in pretrial detention for about 17 months, has been transferred to the hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs' Penal Committee.

The hospitalization proves that Mr. Ravkov suffers serious heart diseases, his lawyer Dmitry Ivanishko told BelaPAN.

The lawyer rejected investigators' accusations that Mr. Ravkov "stimulates diseases" to drag out the study of the case file.

Vyacheslav Terekhovich, chief of the Prosecutor General's Office investigative team in charge of the bribery scandal at the medical institute, gave Mr. Ravkov 28 days to study the 42-volume case file. But Mr. Ravkov failed to complete the case study in the above-mentioned period because of health problems.

Mr. Terekhovich has said openly that Mr. Ravkov is the only suspect being held in jail because he refuses to confess unlike many others of 18 people charged in connection with the scandal.

Mr. Ravkov has sent a letter to the prosecutor general out of despair. It says, "In the event of my death, I consider my murderers the Investigation Department of the Prosecutor General's Office, the medical service of the Gomel Regional Internal Affairs Directorate, and the administration of UZh15/3 [the Gomel detention center]."

Bribery proceedings against Mr. Ravkov, Rector Yury Bandazhevsky and 16 others were instituted in July 1999.

Investigators claim that Mr. Bandazhevsky and his "gang" took a total of about $200,000 in bribes from applicants. However, the suspects were never caught red-handed. The case is based on testimony that, some say, was forced out of students and their parents.

"Investigators have failed to find evidence to show how Bandazhevsky could influence applicants, marks at entrance examinations," says Aleksandr Baranov, the lawyer for the former rector.

Bribery case against Gomel Medical Institute heads goes to trial

Minsk, 22 December 2000. The bribery case against administrators at Gomel State Medical Institute has been sent to the Military Board of the Belarusian Supreme Court for trial, a Supreme Court official has said.

Criminal proceedings against Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, rector of the institute, and Vladimir Ravkov, vice rector, were instituted back on July 12, 1999. In all, the case is said to involve about a dozen individuals. Some are charged with giving or taking bribes for admission to the institute, others with active complicity.

There has been speculation that the case has a distinct political flavor since Professor Bandazhevsky used to criticize the government a lot for neglecting Chernobyl problems.

Hearing of bribery case against Gomel medical institute's administrators to begin in Supreme Court on February 13

Minsk, 12 January 2001. The Military Board of the Belarusian Supreme Court is to begin hearing a bribery case against administrators at Gomel State Medical Institute on February 13, a Supreme Court official told BelaPAN on Friday.

Criminal proceedings against Yury Bandazhevsky, rector of the institute, and Vladimir Ravkov, vice rector, and 15 others were instituted in July 1999. Mr. Ravkov is the only one held in pretrial detention.
Dmitry Ivanishko, Mr. Ravkov’s lawyer, accused investigators of bias against his client.

The lawyer said that Vyacheslav Terekhovich, chief of the Prosecutor General’s Office investigative group in charge of the bribery scandal, had opposed to sending Mr. Ravkov to the hospital for medical tests. The tests showed that Mr. Ravkov has serious cardiovascular diseases.

The case is to be heard by the Military Board because Mr. Ravkov held the rank of medical service lieutenant-colonel at the time of his arrest.

The lawyers note that their client can appeal the Supreme Court’s verdict only to the Supreme Court chairman.

Police arrest another Gomel Medical Institute administrator suspected of corruption

Minsk, 19 January 2001. Police in Gomel have arrested of another top administrator at Gomel State Medical Institute on suspicion of corruption. 

The arrest of Yevgeny Sokolovsky, first vice rector, was warranted by the regional prosecutor. The vice rector must be charged before January 29 or released. 

Mr. Sokolovsky, who holds a kandidat’s degree in medicine, has been working at the institute since its establishment. He reportedly was a close associate of former Rector Yury Bandazhevsky, who now faces bribery charges in a corruption scandal involving 17 institute administrators. 

Investigators knew about Mr. Sokolovsky’s illegal activities in 2000, but did not arrest him because they were too busy working on the Bandazhevsky case, Deputy Regional Procecutor Ivan Guzarevich told BelaPAN on January 19. 

Investigators found no foreign cash or expensive jewelry during a search at his apartment, but discovered some important documents, Mr. Guzarevich said. 

The case has been assigned to Vyacheslav Terekhovich, chief of the investigative team in charge of the Bandazhevsky case. 

The Supreme Court of Belarus is scheduled to begin hearing the Bandazhevsky case on February 13.

Supreme Court rejects petition to drop charges against Gomel Medical Institute administrators

Minsk, 24 January 2001. The Supreme Court of Belarus has rejected a petition to drop corruption charges against two former chief administrators of Gomel State Medical Institute.

Lawyers filed the motion with the Prosecutor General's Office, saying that the prosecutors’ case lacks evidence. The motion was redirected to the Supreme Court.

Yury Bandazhevsky, rector of the institute, and Vladimir Ravkov, vice rector, and 15 others were charged in July 1999 with involvement in a ring that allegedly extorted bribes from applicants in exchange for their successful performance at entrance examination. Mr. Ravkov is the only one held in pretrial detention.

The defense lawyers say that Supreme Court Judge Sukach indirectly showed his bias in the case by rejecting the motion. They note that they have good reasons to challenge the judge at the trial, which is to be held in the Supreme Court on February 13.

Russian human rights defenders urge Lukashenko to drop charges against Professor Bandazhevsky

Minsk, 26 January 2001. Russia’s Emergency Congress for Human Rights in Moscow earlier this week called on Belarus’ chief of state, Aleksandr Lukashenko, to drop all charges against Yury Bandazhevsky, ex-rector of Gomel State Medical Institute.

Criminal proceedings against Professor Bandazhevsky, Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov and about a dozen others were instituted back in July 1999. Some of them are charged with giving or taking bribes for admission to the institute, others with active complicity. The Supreme Court of Belarus is expected to try them on February 13.

“The persecution of the winner of the Hippocrates Award, holder of the Schweitzer Medal, member of several national academies and author of numerous books on the medical effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe is politically motivated. Bandazhevsky is being persecuted for his activities and bitter statements about the underrated dangers of Chernobyl contamination,” reads the congress’s appeal.

The Russian human rights defenders urge Mr. Lukashenko to “put an end to this infamous persecution of the prominent scientist and Belarusian patriot, give him a chance to continue his noble efforts to promote one of the fundamental human rights – the right to live and recover one’s broken health.”

Bribery case against medical institute administrators begins being heard in Gomel

Minsk, 13 February 2001. A panel of military judges of the Belarusian Supreme Court began hearing a bribery case against Gomel State Medical Institute administrators in the building of the Gomel Regional Court on February 13.

Judge Vladimir Sukach presides over the trial. The 8 people in the dock include Yury Bandazhevsky, the ex-rector of the institute, and Vladimir Ravkov, the former vice rector, who are accused of taking bribes and abusing their positions. Among those in the dock are former members of selection commissions that administered entrance examinations in chemistry, biology and Belarusian. They face charges of bribery and mediation in bribery deals. One applicant’s mother is accused of giving a bribe.

Prosecutors say that 52 people have confessed to giving bribes while the defense contend that evidence furnished by investigators is inconclusive and insufficient for a guilty verdict.

Mr. Ravkov has been held in pretrial detention for 19 months. He is the only person involved in the case who is kept in jail.

Investigator Vyacheslav Terekhovich of the Prosecutor General’s Office has said openly that Mr. Ravkov is held in jail because he refuses to confess unlike many others charged in connection with the scandal. The former vice rector suffers serious cardiovascular diseases but he does not receive adequate medical care in jail, according to his lawyer. Investigator Terekhovich insists that Mr. Ravkov pretends to be ill.

Jail guards often have to call an ambulance for Mr. Ravkov, but emergency doctors give medicines that bring only temporary relief. His diseases have not been diagnosed and treated.
Emergency aid was rendered to the former vice rector during the February 13 hearing.

The first court session lasted for just about 30 minutes. The case is scheduled to resume on February 19.

Supreme Court panel rejects defense motions in Gomel Medical Institute bribery case

Minsk, 19 February 2001. A panel of military judges of the Belarusian Supreme Court, which resumed hearing a bribery case against Gomel State Medical Institute administrators on February 19, rejected all the motions filed by the defense.

Aleksandr Baranov, the lawyer for ex-rector Yury Bandazhevsky, wanted the panel to examine new witnesses – members of the presidential commission that had overseen entrance examinations at the institution – Valery Tsepkalo, who serves now as ambassador to the United States, Deputy Education Minister Aleksandr Kurchenkov and a KGB chief. The presiding judge, Vladimir Sukach, said that the commissioners’ examination would not be helpful.

The judge rejected the request to allow lawyer Garri Pogonyailo to represent Dr. Bandazhevsky and Natalya Ravkov to defend her husband, former vice rector Vladimir Ravkov. The judge even refused to let Mrs. Ravkov into the courtroom.

Mr. Pogonyailo commented to BelaPAN that the court was reluctant to admit to the case lawyers independent of government-controlled bar associations.

The panel rejected the motion for Mr. Ravkov’s release from jail and extended his detention term until April 1. The panel ignored the Gomel Heart Center’s recommendation that Mr. Ravkov should be treated for serious heart diseases in the hospital and honored the findings of the regional police department’s medical unit that his condition allowed him to be held in jail.

Mr. Ravkov is the only one held in custody of a dozen in the dock. He has spent 19 months in jail.

The panel dropped the charge of illegal weapon possession against Mr. Ravkov and ordered investigators to return the hunting knife that they had found in the vice rector’s car almost a year after his arrest.

Bandazhevsky, Ravkov plead not guilty in Gomel Medical Institute corruption case

Minsk, 20 February. Yury Bandazhevsky and Vladimir Ravkov, former rector and former vice rector of Gomel State Medical Institute, at a February 20 court hearing in Gomel pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Criminal proceedings against Professor Bandazhevsky, Mr. Ravkov and several others were instituted back on July 12, 1999. Some are charged with giving or taking bribes for admission to the institute, others with active complicity.

The prosecution claims the Medical Institute administrators took a total of about $200,000 in bribes from applicants, while the professor’s supporters in Belarus and abroad say the charges were trumped up to silence his criticism of the government for neglecting Chernobyl problems.
The only other defendant pleading not guilty is a student’s mother charged with giving a bribe. The remaining five defendants have already admitted to brokering payoffs.

On February 20, Judge Vladimir Sukach also rejected Mr. Bandazhevsky’s request to be defended by the prominent Belarusian lawyer Garri Pogonyailo, as well as a petition demanding a medical examination of Mr. Ravkov. The defense believes his being on drugs for angina pectoris makes him unfit for trial.

Belarusian Helsinki Committee condemns judge for restricting former rector’s choice of lawyer in Gomel Medical Institute bribery case

Minsk, 23 February 2001. The Belarusian Helsinki Committee (BHC) has issued a statement condemning the presiding judge’s refusal to let BHC Deputy Chairman Garri Pogonyailo represent Yury Bandazhevsky, the former rector of Gomel State Medical Institute, in his trial.

A panel of military judges of the Belarusian Supreme Court began hearing a bribery case against Gomel State Medical Institute administrators in Gomel on February 13.

The presiding judge, Vladimir Sukach, on February 20 rejected the former rector’s request to include Mr. Pogonyailo in the defense team as “unprovided for by the law.” The BHC considers the decision a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as Belarus’ Constitution and Criminal Procedure Code.

Mr. Pogonyailo, who gained prominence for defending opposition figures in court in the ‘90s, is known to have been expelled from the National Lawyers Collegium (bar association).

The BHC argues that “the country’s laws allow the accused to be represented by any citizen upon proper registration, not just by lawyers and other persons licensed to practice law.” The BHC says the judge’s decision “discredits any further steps by the panel and invalidates any future judgment because of the substantial breach of the procedure that guarantees legal defense to the accused.”

Meanwhile, Judge Sukach has put the trial on hold until February 26 on the ground that many of the defense lawyers have other trials to attend. The judge urged the lawyers to adjust their schedules to ensure continuity of proceedings.

Only three hearings have taken place since the trial began, giving the prosecutor enough time only to read the statement of charges and to start questioning one of the accused.

Apart from Dr. Bandazhevsky, the eight persons in the dock include former Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov, former members of selection commissions that administered entrance examinations in chemistry, biology and Belarusian, and an applicant’s mother.

Prosecutors say that 52 people have confessed to giving bribes while the defense contend that evidence furnished by investigators is inconclusive and insufficient for a guilty verdict.

Scuffle in courtroom over banning Mrs. Ravkov from attending her husband’s trial  

Minsk, 27 February. Judge Vladimir Sukach, who presides over the trial of Gomel State Medical Institute administrators, began the February 26 hearing with issuing warnings to journalist Valery Shchukin and the wife of one of the accused, Natalya Ravkov, after a scuffle in the courtroom.

Since the very beginning of the trial, Mrs. Ravkov has been denied permission to attend the court sessions because she is regarded as a witness in the case.

On the Monday morning, Mrs. Ravkov managed to get into the courtroom, but security officers grabbed her by her arms and attempted to drag her out. Mr. Shchukin intervened. The security retreated when Mrs. Ravkov fell over.

The hearing began half an hour after the incident. On pronouncing his warnings the judge told Mrs. Ravkov to leave the courtroom and she obeyed.

As Mrs. Ravkov told BelaPAN later, she had never been told that she was a witness. Investigators had asked her questions about her husband back in July 1999, but they did not tell her that she was being interrogated, and that by answering their questions she lost the right to represent her husband in court.

A panel of military judges of the Belarusian Supreme Court began hearing the case on February 13.
The 8 people in the dock include Yury Bandazhevsky, the ex-rector of the institute, and Vladimir Ravkov, the former vice rector, who are accused of taking bribes and abusing their positions. Among those accused are former members of selection commissions that administered entrance examinations in chemistry, biology and Belarusian. They face charges of bribery and mediation in bribery deals. One applicant’s mother is accused of giving a bribe.
Mr. Ravkov has been held in pretrial detention for 19 months. He is the only person held in jail among those involved in the case.

 

Former Gomel Medical Institute vice rector says ex-rector Bandazhevsky prosecuted for his firm stance on Chernobyl aftermath

Minsk, 2 March 2001. Vladimir Ravkov, the former vice rector of Gomel State Medical Institute, told a panel of Supreme Court judges on Friday that the corruption charges against the institution’s ex-rector, Yury Bandazhevsky, had been brought in retaliation for his criticism of the government’s policy regarding the Chernobyl aftermath.

Mr. Ravkov, one of the 8 persons involved in the bribery case, was questioned on March 1 and 2.

He said that health ministry officials had pressured a Bandazhevsky-led group of experts, who conducted research into the health effects of radiocesium, into accepting the government’s view that people do not need special conditions to live in radioactively contaminated areas.

The group insisted that the government should do more to protect the areas’ residents from harmful effects of radiocesium, including supplying them with clean food in order to reduce the radionuclide’s intake.

Dr. Bandazhevsky accused the authorities of playing down the scale of dangers from radiation, Mr. Ravkov said.

The former vice rector said that after he was arrested on July 12, 1999, officers of the regional anti-corruption police department offered him freedom in exchange for delivering a large sum in hard cash to Dr. Bandazhevsky. According to Mr. Ravkov, the officers admitted that Dr. Bandazhevsky was their target, not him. When Mr. Ravkov declined the offer, they allegedly put a psychotropic drug in his glass of water to make him testify against Dr. Bandazhevsky. He did testify, but retracted his statement later.

Dr. Bandazhevsky is to testify before the panel on March 6, when the trial resumes after a break.

Ex-rector of Gomel Medical Institute denies bribery charges

Gomel, 19 March 2001. Yury Bandazhevsky, the former rector of Gomel State Medical Institute, denied taking bribes and abusing his office in his statement before a panel of Supreme Court judges on March 19.

Dr. Bandazhevsky said that he had sought to bring his institute to a level where it could compete with Belarus’ leading medical educational institutions in Minsk, Vitebsk and Grodno. He said that under his leadership, the institute had turned out 24 experts with a doctorate or a kandidat’s degree for 9 years, who did research into the effects of radiation doses on people’s health.

Dr. Bandazhevsky said that he sacked about 20 administrators for unfitness for their positions in 1997 and 1998. Those who did not want to “work hard” formed an opposition and bombarded various agencies with complaints, he noted.

According to him, the opposition was especially fierce in 1999, when he was arrested on bribery charges. “As the institution was becoming more prestigious, certain circles wanted to place it and its rector under their control,” Dr. Bandazhevsky said without specifying these circles.

Gomel State Medical Institute abandons research initiated by its former rector

Gomel, 6 April 2001. The Gomel State Medical Institute has abandoned as pointless research into the effects of small radiation doses on animals and humans, the institute’s new rector, Sergei Zhavoronok, told BelaPAN on April 6.

The research was launched by Mr. Zhavoronok’s predecessor, Yury Bandazhevsky, who now stands trial on charges of bribery and abuse of power.

A Bandazhevsky-led team established that radioactive cesium has a toxic effect on human body destroying its systems and organs.

Mr. Zhavoronok said that the Japanese had made the discovery long before Dr. Bandazhevsky and there was a lot of literature available on the subject.

The rector said that it would be “ridiculous” to talk about toxic effects of radioactive cesium, considering the high radiation levels in the Gomel region’s Chernobyl-affected areas.

According to Mr. Zhavoronok, his institution now concentrates on studying the condition of children exposed to radiation at an early age.

The bribery proceedings against Dr. Bandazhevsky and other employees of the institute were launched in July 1999.

 

Witness in Bandazhevsky trial admits writing statement to police’s dictation

Minsk, 10 April 2001. A witness in a criminal case against former administrators of the Gomel State Medical Institute accused of corruption testified in court on April 10 that had written a statement about giving a bribe in return for his niece’s admission to the institute to an investigator’s dictation. The witness, Andrei Potapov, told a panel of Supreme Court judges that he had been shown a sample copy of a statement when he was writing his own.

Another witness, Antonina Dashkevich, said she gave $2,000 to one of the 8 defendants in return for her promise to help her daughter pass entrance exams. Ms. Dashkevich said that she received the money back after her daughter failed at the exams. Some witnesses pointed their finger at former Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov saying they had handed him a bribe.

Physical evidence examined, defense witnesses heard in Gomel Medical Institute corruption trial

Gomel, 27 April 2001. At an April 26 hearing in Gomel, the Military Board of the Supreme Court of Belarus examined physical evidence filed by the prosecution to prove top Gomel Medical Institute administrators guilty of taking bribes, and heard witnesses called by the defense to prove the opposite.

Bribery proceedings against Institute Rector Yury Bandazhevsky, Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov and several others were instituted in July 1999. The prosecution claims the accused took a total of about $200,000 from applicants for admission to the institute. The ex-rector’s numerous supporters argue that the charges were fabricated to silence his criticism of the government for neglecting Chernobyl problems.

The April 26 hearing revealed that the so-called matrices (presumably, examination questions with correct answers), which chief investigator Vyacheslav Terekhovich had repeatedly mentioned as conclusive proof of the charges, were not among the exhibits. The accused allegedly used to sell the secret matrices to applicants for memorizing before the entrance exams.

The matrices in fact never existed, and their absence on the case file proves them to be an invention of Mr. Terekhovich, while the rest of physical evidence (keys to Mr. Ravkov’s apartment, his passport and driving license, notebooks seized from examiners Natalya Fomchenko and Nina Shamochek) seems to make no sense at all, Mr. Ravkov’s lawyer, Dmitry Ivanishko, commented to BelaPAN.

The defense called witnesses to prove that the $14,500 in US cash seized from Mr. Ravkov had been earned legally. Witness Larisa Rakusevich testified that between 1991 and 1994, Mr. Ravkov had extra income from shuttle trade in Turkish rugs. Rug trade was very common in the town where the Ravkov family resided; shuttle traders bought rugs in Istanbul and sold 50 to 200 of them in Russia every month, making $15 to $20 on each rug, according to Ms. Rakusevich.

Another witness, Tatyana S., the mother of a Gomel Medical Institute student, said Organized Crime and Corruption Committee officers have tried to intimidate her into testifying that she paid Mr. Ravkov to secure admission for her son. According to her, the officers threatened to have her son expelled from the institute and to put herself under arrest for a week.

Mr. Ravkov’s term of detention was to expire on May 1. Before closing the hearing, Judge Vladimir Sukach ruled to extend it to June 1. The defense took it as a violation of Belarus’ Code of Criminal Procedure, which stipulates that the defendant must be notified of an extension at least 10 days in advance.

Mr. Ivanishko argued that the ruling only left him five days, including three days off, to appeal against the extension. The lawyer promised to file a complaint with Supreme Court Chairman Valentin Sukalo.

Judge Sukach also ignored Mr. Ravkov’s complaints about pains in the region of the heart and denied him permission to meet with his wife, whom the defendant has not seen for more than three months.

Prosecutor announces revised charges against Gomel State Medical Institute defenders

Minsk, 7 May 2001. The prosecutor in the Gomel State Medical Institute bribery trial announced revised charges against former Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov and Natalya Fomchenko, former head of an examining board at the institute.

Mr. Ravkov is accused of 21 counts of taking bribes to the total amount of $46,300 from applicants for admission to the institute. Ms. Fomchenko faces 10 counts of bribery. The prosecutor said that Mr. Ravkov shared “at least $10,000” of his bribe profits with ex-Rector Yury Bandazhevsky.

The prosecutor said that Mr. Ravkov and Ms. Fomchenko should be punished under Article 166 of the 1962 Criminal Code for abuse of power and Article 430 of the 2000 Criminal Code for taking bribes as members of a criminal ring.

Mr. Ravkov’s defense attorney, Dmitry Ivanishko asked the panel for a break until May 15 to prepare a new defense strategy, but the presiding judge set the next session for 2p.m., May 8.

Prosecution demands 9-year prison sentences for Bandazhevsky, Ravkov

Gomel, 21 May 2001. The prosecution in the bribery proceedings against former administrators of Gomel State Medical Institute suggested on May 21 that former Rector Yury Bandazhevsky be sentenced to 9 years in a medium security prison and property forfeiture.

The prosecution demanded the same punishment for former Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov. The prosecution also suggested that Medical Service Colonel Ravkov be stripped of his military rank.

As for Nina Shamochek and Natalya Fomchenko, who had been members of the institution’s selection commission, the prosecution wanted them to be sentenced to 3 years in prison. Another former member of the selection commission, Lidiya Goncharova, should be punished by two years’ imprisonment, the prosecution said.  

It was suggested that the two parents in the dock, who had allegedly given bribes, be sentenced to prison terms equal to the periods they had spent in jail pending trial – 6 and 4 months, respectively. The prosecution also asked the Supreme Court panel that the last defendant, the alleged intermediary, should be punished by 18 months of corrective labor.

The lawyers of Messrs. Bandazhevsky and Ravkov insist that the prosecution failed to reveal the mechanism of the administrators’ illegal assistance to applicants. The lawyers maintain that demanding so severe punishment for the unproved offenses, the prosecution is executing a political order.

Dr. Bandazhevsky presents his final arguments in court

Minsk, 24 May 2001. Yury Bandazhevsky, ex-rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute on trail for alleged bribery and abuse of office, said at the May 24 court hearing that the case against him was based on false anonymous statements and testimony given by people, who were used because of their weak character.

He said that the same methods had been used against him all the time when he headed the institute to silence his criticism of the authorities for not doing enough to address health issues caused by the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

“I understood how radionuclides affect human health. I want to say, that in terms of health we are on the verge of a disaster,” the ex-rector said.

He expressed regret that his theories did not met with support in Belarus and abroad.

In his 30-minute statement, Dr. Bandazhevsky made a detailed analysis of witnesses’ testimony, drawing the judges’ attention to inconsistencies.

He did not ask for acquittal, just said, “I will be sorry to hear any sentence.”

The prosecutor demanded a 9-year prison sentence for Dr. Bandazhevsky on May 21.

The bribery proceedings against him and other institute administrators were instituted in July 1999. Prosecutors claim that they set up a criminal ring to extort bribes from applicants.

 

Bribery trial turns into lecture on perjury as Gomel Medical Institute defendants make last statements

Gomel, 25 May 2001. Vladimir Ravkov, the former vice rector of Gomel State Medical Institute, in his last statement in court on May 25 apologized to his co-defendant, former Rector Yury Bandazhevsky, for “my involuntary perjury against you.”

Mr. Ravkov was the first whom the police arrested in July 1999 on a charge of taking bribes from prospective students in exchange for high grades at entrance exams. Dr. Bandazhevsky was arrested on the strength of the vice rector’s testimony. Mr. Ravkov withdrew his testimony a week later and continues to insist that it was forced out of him.

Two other defendants, former examiners Nina Shamochek and Natalya Fomchenko, confessed in their final statements of having helped the police cook up charges against Messrs. Bandazhevsky and Ravkov in exchange for a promise of release from custody and mild sentences.

The prosecutor, Nikolai Korzun, did ask the judges to sentence each of the two to only three years in appreciation of their cooperation. Neither Ms. Shamochek nor Ms. Fomchenko denied having taken bribes from prospective students for admission to the institute.

Another two defendants, students’ mothers who are being tried on a charge of giving bribes to the institute officials, called on the judges to acquit them or at least not to send them to prison. They claimed being wrongly accused by Mses. Shamochek and Fomchenko.

Dr. Bandazhevsky made his deny-all last statement on May 24. After hearing the rest, the panel of Supreme Court judges set the next hearing for June 12. It is considered likely that the judges will hand down their verdict on that day, drawing the curtain on the long-playing trial.

Bandazhevsky caught on Ukrainian border with false passport

Gomel, 11 June 2001. Yury Bandazhevsky, the key defendant in the ongoing Gomel State Medical Institute bribery trial, was arrested by the Belarusian authorities at 6 p.m. on June 10 while trying to cross over to Ukraine on a false Ukrainian passport, the press office of the Gomel regional police department said.

Professor Bandazhevsky was reportedly traveling with three Ukrainian citizens, one of whom is said to be a member of the Supreme Rada (Ukraine’s parliament). All four were apprehended at the checkpoint of Novaya Guta on the Ukrainian border and are being held in a detention center, according to the police.

Dr. Bandazhevsky, the former rector of Gomel State Medical Institute, and several others have been under investigation since July 1999 on a charge of taking a total of about $200,000 in bribes from prospective students for admission to the Institute. The ex-rector’s numerous supporters in Belarus and abroad argue that the charges were fabricated to silence his criticism of the government for neglecting Chernobyl problems.

Dr. Bandazhevsky was released from pretrial detention in December 1999 on health grounds in exchange for a written pledge not to flee from justice. The court proceedings began in Gomel in February 2001. The accused have already made their last statements, and their sentences were expected on June 12.

Arrest on Ukrainian border adds to charges against Bandazhevsky

Gomel, 11 June 2001. Professor Yury Bandazhevsky’s arrest on the Ukrainian border on June 10 added a charge of “violating regulations governing entry into the border zone” to the heavy charges he faces in the Gomel State Medical Institute bribery trial, officials in Gomel said on June 11.

The new charge entails a warning or a small fine under Belarus’ Administrative Offenses Code, while the criminal charge of taking bribes from prospective students back in the late 90s may put the former Gomel State Medical Institute rector in jail for years.

Following his arrest at the border checkpoint of Novaya Guta, Dr. Bandazhevsky has been taken into custody for a standard term of three days, losing the relative freedom he gained in December 1999 by giving a written pledge not to flee from justice.

At least three days, or longer if necessary, will be needed to establish the circumstances of the violation, as well as for identification purposes, since the suspect was arrested with a Ukrainian passport in a different name, Aleksandr Verkhovets, deputy chief of the Border Guard in Gomel, told BelaPAN.

Identification is only a pretext; the authorities are in fact waiting for the next court hearing in the bribery case, set for June 12, to extend Dr. Bandazhevsky’s detention till the end of his trial, commented the professor’s lawyer, Aleksandr Baranov.

Wife does not believe Bandazhevsky tried to flee from prosecution

Gomel, 11 June 2001. The wife of Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, the key defendant in the ongoing Gomel State Medical Institute bribery trial, rules out the possibility that his arrest on the Ukrainian border on June 10 was the outcome of his attempt to flee Belarus.

The former Gomel State Medical Institute rector who is accused of taking bribes from prospective students for admission to the Institute was arrested by the Belarusian police Sunday allegedly while trying to cross over to Ukraine on a false Ukrainian passport.

According to Mrs. Bandazhevsky, her husband in fact took a train to Minsk on June 10 to prepare the publication of his monograph on “Radiocesium and Inborn Defects,” and planned to return to Gomel in time for a June 12 court session that was expected to draw the curtain on his long-playing trial.

As Galina Bandazhevsky said, her husband anticipated a tough sentence and was in a hurry to have his scientific work published. According to her, she accompanied him halfway to the railroad station. “I know for sure that he planned to come back,” she stressed.

Mrs. Bandazhevsky suggested the professor might have been brought to the Ukrainian border against his will. According to her, their house was under close surveillance throughout the preceding week, and they kept getting telephone threats.

As Mrs. Bandazhevsky said, her husband called her over the phone at about 7:30 p.m. on June 10 - about an hour and a half after his arrest - to tell her what happened. “It had to be this way. You will understand later,” she quoted him saying.

Less than a month has passed since the European Parliament awarded a Passport to Freedom to Dr. Bandazhevsky. According to Mrs. Bandazhevsky, European MPs sent a letter to Aleksandr Lukashenko urging the Belarusian leader to let the professor come to Strasbourg for the passport. “As far as I know, there has been no reply,” she told BelaPAN.

Bandazhevsky says his life is in danger

Gomel, 12 May 2001. “My own life and the lives of my family got into real danger last Saturday and Sunday,” Professor Yury Bandazhevsky told BelaPAN following a June 12 hearing in his trial on charges of taking bribes while rector of Gomel State Medical Institute.

Dr. Bandazhevsky, who was once freed from custody on health grounds pending the outcome of his trial, was arrested again on June 10 allegedly while trying to cross to Ukraine with a fake passport. He refused to answer a BelaPAN correspondent’s question whether he really was on the Ukrainian border on Sunday. “I have to save my life first,” he said.

A June 11 report on Belarusian Television (BT) labeling the professor a fugitive from justice featured what was claimed to be police footage of his arrest. It showed a border checkpoint, somehow leaving out Dr. Bandazhevsky himself. BT reporter Svetlana Konopatskaya confirmed to BelaPAN that the professor was not on the tape they were given. Police officials refused to comment on the matter.

The ex-rector continues to be held in a detention center run by the Border Troops on a charge of “violating regulations governing entry to the border zone,” which entails a warning or a nominal fine under Belarus’ Administrative Offenses Code. Prosecutors in his bribery trial demanded nine years in prison for him.

Dr. Bandazhevsky’s lawyer, Aleksandr Baranov, said the authorities have all along been denying him permission to speak to his client in private on the ground that defendants in “administrative” cases are not entitled to an attorney.

The June 12 court hearing only lasted about five minutes. The presiding judge, Vladimir Sukach, announced that a sentence on Dr. Bandazhevsky would be pronounced on June 18. The professor also had his detention extended until June 20.

Lukashenko on disappearances, Bandazhevsky capture

Minsk, 15 June 2001. “Now they look concerned over the disappearances again. ‘People are missing!’ say they. But they care nothing for these people, for their wives and families. They are just taking political advantage of these things,” said Belarus’ head of state, Aleksandr Lukashenko, in response to the June 10 revelations by two former Prosecutor’ Office investigators that Mr. Lukashenko’s missing political opponents were murdered by the regime.

While visiting the Belarusian Optomechanical Group in Minsk on June 14, the Belarusian leader also commented on the June 10 arrest on the Ukrainian border of Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, the key defendant in the Gomel State Medical Institute bribery trial.

“Now take Bandazhevsky. Caught on the border, he was. Look at them playing it up. But the situation there was quite different: nine people arrested for bribes; used to take thousand dollar payoffs for admission to the medical institute; all confessed; no way for him to get away,” Mr. Lukashenko said.

He went on to comment on the alleged involvement of Ukrainian parliamentarians in Dr. Bandazhevsky’s suspected flight from justice: ”So, they come from Ukraine, MPs among them, bring a forged passport, stick his photo on it. They head for Ukraine to try to smuggle him into the West at the same time as those two Prosecutor’s Office boozers decide to run for it.”

Mr. Lukashenko quoted the jailed professor, “I surrendered to the border guards because my life was in danger.” “What danger, what life are you talking about?” he wondered. “Are not the border guards officers of state? Are not they subordinate to the president like the MVD and the KGB? They are. They caught him, and they took him to court where he was to answer in two days.”

Defense looking for ways to appeal Bandazhevsky sentence

Minsk, 19 June 2001. The harshness of the eight-year sentence handed down on June 18 to former Rector Yury Bandazhevsky in the Gomel State Medical Institute bribery trial came as a surprise to the defense team, Dr. Bandazhevsky’s attorney, Aleksandr Baranov, told BelaPAN.

Decisions by the Supreme Court of Belarus are not subject to appeal, but the defense keeps “looking for ways to appeal it,” Mr. Baranov said. “We believe the law making this sentence unappealable to be in conflict with Article 60 of the Constitution,” he added. The article in question guarantees all citizens “the protection of their rights and freedoms in a competent, independent and unbiased court within time limits determined by the law.”

Mr. Baranov insists that the four-month trial failed to prove Professor Bandazhevsky to have taken bribes from prospective students for admission to the Institute. “The case is about pure fraud on the part of the teaching staff,” he said. “But in fact, the kids were gaining admission on their own. Nobody was helping them in. Our president has set up a special commission. It is a net that is very hard to slip through. And it is good, by the way.”

“The case involved a lot of violations. Bandazhevsky had his right to defense violated,” commented Garri Pogonyailo, deputy chairman of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee. According to him, the sentence can only be vacated if the Prosecutor General of Belarus challenges it as part of his supervisory jurisdiction.

On June 18, the Supreme Court also passed an eight-year sentence on Vladimir Ravkov, former vice rector of the Institute, while three former instructors received suspended sentences ranging from two to three years. Dr. Bandazhevsky continues to be held in a detention center in Gomel. His lawyers say they do not know yet in which labor camp he will be serving his sentence.

Gomel Medical Institute administrator says he faces dilemma -- death or freedom in exchange for testimony demanded by investigators

Minsk, 26 July 2001. “I have been thrown into a dilemma -- voluntary death or the release from under arrest in exchange for testimony demanded by investigators,” says the Gomel State Medical Institute’s first vice rector in a statement that he sent from jail on July 26.

Yevgeny Sokolovsky was arrested on January 18, two years after a big bribery scandal at the institute resulted in 8-year prison sentences for its rector, Yury Bandazhevsky, and vice rector, Vladimir Ravkov.

Mr. Sokolovsky was charged with taking bribes and abusing his office in 1998-2001. He says that his prosecution was triggered by an anonymous letter.

Mr. Sokolovsky claims that the actual aim of the criminal prosecution of the Bandazhevsky team was to “wreck the well-adjusted work of the medical institute and turn it into a private shady business.”

He says that he has not been questioned since his arrest and that investigator Vyacheslav Terekhovich offered him freedom in exchange for his confession to crimes he has never committed.

Mr. Sokolovsky says that during his physical examination Gomel doctors diagnosed 45 diseases, while forensic experts “chose at random only 27” and denied him hospital treatment.

The first vice rector says he has petitioned the prosecutor general, the Presidential Administration and other institutions but received no answers or formal replies.

OSCE Ambassador Wieck visits Professor Bandazhevsky in Minsk prison

Minsk, 16 August 2001. Ambassador Hans-Georg Wieck, head of the OSCE Advisory and Monitoring Group in Belarus, visited Professor Yury Bandazhevsky on August 15 in a prison in Minsk where the Belarusian scholar is serving his eight-year sentence.

In June 2001, the Supreme Court of Belarus convicted the former Gomel State Medical Institute rector of taking bribes from prospective students. His numerous supporters and human rights organizations in Belarus and abroad believe the charge was trumped up to silence his criticism of the government for neglecting Chernobyl problems.

The objective of Dr. Wieck’s visit was to see the conditions faced by the professor and to discuss possible forms of support. Dr. Bandazhevsky voices no complaints about the way he is being treated in prison; he uses every opportunity to carry on his research work, reads scientific literature and gets a lot of letters from Belarusian and foreign colleagues, according to his lawyer, Sergei Tsurko, who, too, visited his client on August 15.

Dr. Bandazhevsky is a reputed expert on the effects of radiation exposure on humans. His years-long research revealed alarming changes in the health of Belarusians living in areas affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The results he obtained are said to differ much from the picture painted by the Belarusian authorities.

Belarusian Helsinki Committee representatives visit prisoners of conscience

Minsk, 5 October 2001. Three representatives of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee (BHC), Tatyana Protko, Garri Pogonyailo and Dmitry Markushevsky, on October 5 visited Yury Bandazhevsky and Andrei Klimov, who serve prison terms in UZh 15/1, a high-security correctional institution in Minsk. Both are regarded by the international community as prisoners of conscience. 

In June 2001, the Supreme Court of Belarus sentenced Dr. Bandazhevsky, the former rector of Gomel State Medical Institute, to eight years in prison for bribery. His supporters and human rights organizations in Belarus and abroad believe that the charge was trumped up to silence his criticism of the government for neglecting Chernobyl problems.
Mr. Klimov, a member of Belarus’ disbanded legislature and an outspoken critic of the Aleksandr Lukashenko regime, was sentenced to 6 years in prison in 2000 for large-scale embezzlement and forgery. The charges are widely believed to be politically motivated.

According to the BHC press office, the prisoners noted that they were treated well by the facility’s administration. However, they said that the prison was overcrowded, and that poor quality food often causes diseases among the inmates.

Lawyer Garri Pogonyailo assisted Dr. Bandazhevsky in drawing up an appeal against his sentence.

Mr. Klimov asked the BHC representatives to pass a message for the press, in which he urged Belarus’ democratic forces to keep up pressure on the regime after Aleksandr Lukashenko’s “sweeping” victory in the recent presidential election.

He called on the Belarusians not to despair. “We are not on the brink of a precipice, we just have to get out of it,” said the message. “There are people in Belarus ready to lead the country to prosperity, to introduce it to the friendly European family, return them their faith in the future and in the present, which was stolen by the current regime.”

Corruption proceedings continue against former first deputy rector of Gomel State Medical Institute

Minsk, 22 November 2001. A corruption case continues in the court of Gomel’s Tsentralny district against Yevgeny Sokolovsky, former first deputy rector of the Gomel State Medical Institute.

Mr. Sokolovsky was arrested on January 18, two years after a big bribery scandal at the institute resulted in 8-year prison sentences for its rector, Yury Bandazhevsky, and vice rector, Vladimir Ravkov.
He is charged with taking a $2,000 bribe from a Russian citizen for helping her daughter to get admission to the institute. In September 1999, a doctor from the Dobrush district allegedly gave him $500 in exchange for helping her daughter with her studies. Investigators say that Mr. Sokolovsky ordered university instructors to overmark her performance. The former first deputy rector is also accused of exceeding his authority.

Mr. Sokolovsky headed the institute for a few months after Dr. Bandazhevsky’s arrest. He reportedly had to reject job applications that he received from former institute employees, who were sacked by Dr. Bandazhevsky and wanted to return to the institute after his arrest. They finally got their jobs back after Sergei Zhavoronok was appointed as new rector.

In his earlier letters from jail, Mr. Sokolovsky said he faced a dilemma -- voluntary death or release in exchange for testimony demanded by investigators.

Mr. Sokolovsky’s case was investigated by Vyacheslav Terekhovich, the same person who was in charge of the Bandazhevsky case.

Convicted Gomel State Medical Institute rector and vice rector file complaints with UN Human Rights Committee, European Court of Human Rights

Gomel, 3 December 2001. Yury Bandazhevsky, the former rector of Gomel State Medical Institute, and former Vice Rector Vladimir Ravkov, who were sentenced to eight years in prison each on June 18 for taking bribes from applicants for admission to the Institute, have filed complaints with the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Committee and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

The complaints, which were drawn up by the convicts’ lawyers, say that numerous irregularities and violations of the accused’s rights prevented the case from being examined thoroughly and impartially.

In particular, lawyer Dmitry Ivanishko points out that his client Vladimir Ravkov was forced to give testimony against himself by violence, threats and other illegal methods. Most of the witnesses, applicants’ parents who allegedly gave bribes, said in court that investigators had put psychological and other pressure on them, Mr. Ivanishko says.

According to the lawyer, of his two years in pre-trial detention, Mr. Ravkov spent two months in jail illegally because the investigators failed to issue authorization for extending his detention in proper time. Mr. Ivanishko noted that the reluctance of the investigators and the jail administration to provide medical aid to Mr. Ravkov provoked him into going on two hunger strikes and considerably deteriorated his health condition. Dr. Bandazhevsky had similar problems.

The lawyer of Mr. Ravkov lists a total of more than 30 violations of his client’s rights during the preliminary investigation and the trial.

Out of the eight persons who were prosecuted in the case, only Messrs. Bandazhevsky and Ravkov were sentenced to imprisonment.      

Dr. Bandazhevsky’s numerous supporters in the country and abroad, as well as international and Belarusian human rights organizations, believe that the charge against him was trumped-up to silence his criticism of the government for neglecting Chernobyl problems.

Even during the investigation and the trial, Dr. Bandazhevsky kept conducting scientific experiments at home, according to the wife. Over the last two years, he has written five monographs on the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on human health.

Jailed researcher prepares to publish two books abroad

Minsk, 1 February 2002. Yury Bandazhevsky, a prominent Belarusian researcher who was sentenced to eight years in prison on corruption charges last year, has written in jail two books that will be issued abroad.

Yury Tsurko, lawyer for the former rector of the State Medical Institute in the southern city of Gomel, told BelaPAN that Dr. Bandazhevsky has the opportunity to work in the library and access to scientific literature.

Last June, Dr. Bandazhevsky was convicted of taking bribes in exchange for college admission. He denied the corruption charge, saying that the authorities took revenge on him for highlighting the disastrous effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Human rights campaigners say that the catalyst for Dr. Bandazhevsky's arrest was a study of children close to Gomel, 130 kilometers northeast of the Chernobyl plant. It found that 80 percent of the children who had been exposed to the highest levels of radiation had irregular heart rhythms and other cardiac disorders which, in many cases, proved fatal.

According to Mr. Tsurko, Dr. Bandazhevsky receives hundreds of letters from foreign politicians, scientists and ordinary people. “He feels support from various international organizations, but not from Belarusian ones,” the lawyer said.

Belarusian ruler Aleksandr Lukashenko had rejected the researcher’s appeal for clemency. Dr. Bandazhevsky and his lawyer intend to appeal against the conviction to the Supreme Court’s chairman.

“Dr. Bandazhevsky has no illusions about the chances of having his conviction overturned, but he hopes. It is difficult to live without hope in his situation,” Mr. Tsurko said.

Bribery case against another Gomel doctor goes to court

Minsk, 3 April 2002. The Prosecutor General’s Office of Belarus has announced completing a bribery investigation against Yury Yankelevich, a departmental chief with the State Medical Institute in Gomel in southeastern Belarus. The case is going to court.

Mr. Yankelevich is being held in custody as an accomplice to Professor Yury Bandazhevsky, a former State Medical Institute rector who was convicted in June 2001 of taking bribes from prospective students for admission to the Institute and is now serving an eight-year prison sentence.

Dr. Bandazhevsky is known as a prominent researcher in health effects of radiation. His numerous supporters in Belarus and abroad, including international human rights organizations, believe the real reason behind his prosecution was his criticism of the Belarusian government’s handing of the Chernobyl aftermath.
Prosecutors say Mr. Yankelevich, by agreement with the rector, accepted a $7,000 bribe in July 1997 from a couple who sought admission to the Institute for their son and daughter, and shared the money with Dr. Bandazhevsky.

In July 1999, he allegedly promised a Gomel doctor he knew that he would arrange entry to the Institute for a daughter of the doctor’s friends. He accepted $5,000 in cash for the rector, but Dr. Bandazhevsky’s arrest on July 13 canceled the plan, prosecutors say.

Chernobyl march organizers concerned about fate of jailed scientist

Minsk, 11 April 2002. Organizers of the Charnobylski Shlyakh [Path of Chernobyl] march expressed concern about the fate of Yury Bandazhevsky, a Belarusian scientist who tried to highlight the disastrous effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster on children’s health.

Dr. Bandazhevsky was sentenced to eight years in prison last year ostensibly for taking bribes in exchange for college admission.

Dr. Bandazhevsky’s works “showed that the accumulation of radionuclides such as cesium in the muscles, even in small doses, leads to irregular heart rhythms and changes in the immune system,” Valery Dyadichkin, head of a Chernobyl association, told reporters in Minsk on April 11. “Bandazhevsky’s conclusions ran counter to the generally accepted concept supported by the authorities.”

Vintsuk Vyachorka, leader of the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF), said that the Belarusian authorities benefited from the arrest of Dr. Bandazhevsky, who proved fatal effects of small radiation doses on population, something that the authorities were reluctant to acknowledge.

Mr. Vyachorka pointed out that after the Chernobyl disaster, the government accepted scientists’ recommendations to resettle people and stop food production in the contaminated areas. “But because of the permanent economic crisis, inability to bring about economic recovery, and a lack of money, the government adopted another concept suggesting that people should continue living in the contaminated areas,” Mr. Vyachorka said.

Mr. Dyadichkin added that the Belarusian authorities would use the UN recommendation to shift the focus of Chernobyl assistance from humanitarian measures to sustainable socioeconomic development for the affected areas to cut expenses on Chernobyl programs.

Bandazhevsky to file complaint with UN Human Rights Committee

Minsk, 19 April 2002. Yury Bandazhevsky, a prominent Belarusian researcher who was sentenced to eight years in prison on corruption charges last year, has drawn up a complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee.

On April 19, Yury Tsurko, lawyer for the former rector of the State Medical Institute in the southern city of Gomel, visited him in the UZH-15/1 correctional institution on Kalvariyskaya Street in Minsk.

As Mr. Tsurko told BelaPAN, the complaint, which is be sent within the next few days, contains information about criminal procedure irregularities and the Belarusian authorities’ actions regarding Dr. Bandazhevsky in violation of the International Pact of Civil and Political Rights, to which Belarus is a party.

In June 2001, Dr. Bandazhevsky was convicted of taking bribes in exchange for college admission. He denied the corruption charge, saying that the authorities took revenge on him for highlighting the disastrous effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Human rights organizations say that the catalyst for Dr. Bandazhevsky’s arrest was a study of children close to Gomel, 130 kilometers northeast of the Chernobyl plant. It found that 80 percent of the children who had been exposed to the highest levels of radiation had irregular heart rhythms and other cardiac disorders which, in many cases, proved fatal.

Belarusian ruler Aleksandr Lukashenko rejected the researcher’s appeal for clemency.

END