Tamara Shchapyotkina was found guilty of working with foreign media without accreditation.
Leninsky District Court of Brest fined the journalist from Byaroza Tamara Shchapyotkina 7 million 200 thousand rubles (40 basic units) for cooperation with Radio Racyja.
As stated in the administrative offense protocol, on January 8, 2015 Shchapyotkina alledgedly made an interview with an employee of traffic police Siarhei Nelipovich, which later appeared on the Radio Racyja website.
the trial took place on March 6 without Shchapyotkina, but the the journalist was not notified of the decision. To find out the result of the trial, the woman came purposefully travelled from Byaroza to Brest on March 11.
Shchapyotkina: "Yesterday, I called (the Leninsky district court- Euroradio) and said that I wanted to learn more about my case. To this day I did not know how they punished me! The appeal period has already lasted 5 days! So I came here to learn about the decision and so that the lawyer had time to write a cassation appeal."
Incidentally, Shchapyotkina was summoned to court via SMS. Despite the lack of a formal subpoena, Shchapyotkina still came to the regional center on March 6. However, she could not get to her own trial, even though she had arrived on time. The court staff said that, she was not present at the judge's office, therefore, they began the proceedings without her.
The journalist from Byaroza was already fined 4.5 million rubles in December 2014 for cooperation with Radio Racyja.
