Ministry of Internal Affairs: "Volna" case is not finished yet!
After additional investigation the criminal case against Pinsk football club can be resumed. The directive board of "Volna" call the case illustrative, while th
"Volna" case is resumed in Pinsk. The directive board of the club have
been under accusation of fictive employment of players to the town's
enterprises for a month - since August 23 till September 24. However,
after the club's administration has sold Vital Kibuk to "Dynama Brest"
and voluntarily covered all the expenses out of the received money the
criminal case against the football functioners has been closed.
However, it turned out nothing was that simple. “We are now conducting additional investigation and cannot comment on that yet, — informed Pinsk Administration of struggle against organized criminality and corruption to the European Radio for Belarus. - The
question is open. Additional investigation means there might be a
criminal case started again. Or maybe not. Just understand that we
cannot say anything for sure at the moment”.
"Volna"'s director Mikhail Shalamitski has provided more details: “Our
sponsors - construction organizations - are in fact being checked at
the moment. They investigate how their leaders used the finance which we
had transferred to their accounts. Another question arouse: why it was
the club to cover the enterprises' expenses, not the footballers? Well,
if they consider this a violation we can extract these sums out of our
players' salaries”.
As for the salaries of Pinsk footballers,
they are not high. There wouldn't be a necessity to look for additional
jobs at the enterprises not connected with sports for them otherwise.
In addition to that, after the scandal part of the people who supported
"Volna" turned their backs to the club. Mikhail Shalamitski:
"We've
tied our belts. We haven't received food for a certain period of time.
Everyone left us as if we were sick in plague or something. It was very
hard to find support. Only now people started helping us and we found
the way out of this crisis situation. But the sponsors will give nothing
to the club until those criminal cases are closed. So we have the only
hope now, that they will not bother these sponsors".
Mikhail Shalamitski considers the events around "Volna" illustrative.
“The
point is to show it's forbidden to do this way any longer at the
example of "Volna". Like, we can sacrifice "Volna". However, the whole
Belarusian sports is based on that and they agree to that themselves".
Representatives of the Administration of struggle against organized criminality and corruption disagree with such explanation of "Volna" case:
“It's
not an illustrative process. There was no order and no one ever told us
to show something to someone at the example of "Volna". No! Pinsk
services on struggle with economic crimes received information and
started investigation - that's it. Then they transferred these materials
to the President's Administration and to the Ministry of Internal
Affairs. But no one ever set such a task - to make an illustrative
process”.
The results of the investigation will be revealed
in two weeks. Two more weeks under the pressure of uncertainty for
"Volna". The club has lost several positions in the tournament table of
the fist league of the Belarusian football championship for the months
spent under criminal harassment. "Volna" now occupies the 10th place
with 29 points after 25 rounds. "Veras" also has 29 points, and
"Slavia", which is ranked 9th, has 3 points more.