Liudmila Chekina, Tut.by director, released

Liudmila Chekina was among the political prisoners who were released and taken out of the country on September 16.

The general director of TUT BY MEDIA LLC was detained on May 18, 2021. On that day, security forces came not only to her home but also to the homes of some other employees of the company and partner organizations as part of a criminal case under Part 2 of Article 243 of the Criminal Code (evasion of tax and fee payments on an especially large scale).

The trial in the Tut.by case only began in early 2023 and was held behind closed doors. Along with Chekina, the editor-in-chief of Belarus's largest portal Maryna Zolatava, economics and politics editor Volha Loika, correspondent Alena Talkachova, and legal counsel Katsiaryna Tkachenka were tried. Before the trial, Talkachova, Loika, and Tkachenka left the country.

Павялічыць

Liudmila Chekina was charged under three criminal articles: evasion of tax and fee payments on an especially large scale (Part 2 of Article 243 of the Criminal Code); organization of intentional actions aimed at inciting racial, national, religious, or other social hatred, committed by a group of persons, resulting in grave consequences (Part 3 of Article 130 of the Criminal Code); management of calls to actions aimed at harming the national security of the Republic of Belarus, committed using mass media or the global computer network Internet (Part 3 of Article 361 of the Criminal Code).

In October 2022, the State Security Committee of Belarus included Liudmila Chekina, along with Maryna Zolatava, in the list of persons 'involved in terrorist activities'.

On March 17, 2023, the court issued a verdict — 12 years in a general-regime penal colony and a fine of 1000 basic units (37,000 rubles). She served her term in women's penal colony No. 4 in Homiel. Her son was waiting for her at large.

Liudmila Chekina was born on July 13, 1973, in Sergiev Posad, Russia. Her father was a career military officer, so the family moved frequently and settled in Zhodzina, Minsk region, before the collapse of the USSR.

From school, she became interested in jurisprudence: first, she graduated with honors from a legal technical school, and later from the BSU Faculty of Law. She began her career as a lawyer in Zhodzina, and in 2008, she moved to Minsk, where she joined the company "Nadzeynyya Systemy" (Reliable Systems) as a legal counsel. In 2012, Chekina became the general director of "Nadzeynyya Systemy". Later, she completed an Executive MBA course at IPM Business School. In 2017, she headed "TUT BY MEDIA".

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