Investigators to decide whether you can travel abroad

A person who has not paid a fine issued by a traffic police inspector can be banned from leaving the country. But it is mostly a personal decision of investigators that can prevent you from traveling.

The president tasked the Ministry of Justice to update the database of citizens banned from leaving the country. Lyudmila Mazan, a spokesperson for the ministry, told the European Radio for Belarus, that although the ministry was not in the position to refuse the president’s order, it was not going to open a special department to gather this information.

According to Larysa Milgui, the deputy head of the judiciary department at the Ministry of Justice, their data makes only a small part of the database.

“We update the database only with court rulings. This makes just a small part of the database which includes information supplied by agencies that are allowed to ban citizens from traveling.

The list of the agencies includes the KGB, the Interior Ministry and courts. The database is actually very big”, she said.

The list of the people who will be turned home at the border also includes those who have defaulted to pay aliments or have to compensate losses. For example, if someone owes a neighbor some money and the latter has filed a complaint in court, this person will not be able to spend holidays in Turkey.

Your vacations can also be disrupted, if you have not paid a fine for violating the moving rules.

As for the people who are involved in a criminal case, it is the investigators who can prevent them from traveling. Larysa Milgui says that people can be restricted from leaving the country regardless of whether they are treated as a witness or a suspect.

She also said that it would take not more than two days to update the information in the database after a citizen has cleared all of his obligations.

In the view of Alena Tankachova, a lawyer, the state is not allowed to deprive the people who did not pay a fine or aliments of their right to travel. Only those who have made a written undertaking not to leave the country should be banned from traveling, she says.

The European Radio for Belarus reported earlier that one week after the New Year’s Day, border officials at the airports in Moscow did not have any lists of Belarus nationals restricted from leaving the country. The Belarus’s Interior Ministry said it was a drawback that would be rectified soon. But the border guards at the Domodedovo airport in Moscow confirmed to the European Radio for Belarus that they were still using the former database where only the Belarusians wanted by Interpol are listed.