BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

19/05/2006

Europe Freezes Financial Assets of Belarus Officials

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

MOSCOW, May 18 - The European Union today imposed a freeze on bank accounts and other financial assets of President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko and 35 other senior officials in Belarus, along with their families or proxies, in retaliation for a rigged presidential election in March and the crackdown on government opponents that has continued in its wake.

Wide-ranging coverage of Russia and the former Soviet republics, updated by The Times's Moscow bureau.

The freeze follows a ban on travel to the European Union's 25 member states, which the United States also officially imposed earlier this week. The Bush administration has also warned that it would freeze Mr. Lukashenko's assets, but has not yet done so.

The immediate effect is unknown, since it is not clear whether Mr. Lukashenko has bank accounts in Europe or the United States, and if so, how much money they might contain. Mr. Lukashenko himself has mocked the idea, as he has the visa ban, both of which have been widely telegraphed. Even before the election, he denied having assets abroad, as officials did again this week when the European Union signaled its decision.

"Take this money, if you know that there is any there," Mr. Lukashenko said then in typically defiant remarks in a televised interview. "There is nothing to get Lukashenko for. Understand?"

Mr. Lukashenko, in office since 1994, won a third term with what officials said was 83 percent of the vote; the leading opposition candidate, Aleksandr Milinkevich, won only 6 percent, a result broadly disputed by Mr. Lukashenko's critics in Belarus and by American and European officials.

Mr. Milinkevich welcomed the step as an important new lever against Mr. Lukashenko's government, one that harmed senior officials but not the broader population, as economic sanctions would.

"Even if they do not manage to find such accounts, it is effective because it has a strong moral impact on officials," he said in a telephone interview from Belarus. "As for visas, officials have given interviews in the press. They keep saying they have been offended unjustly, but one can see they are quite concerned, though frankly Lukashenko does not allow them to go abroad very often."

The freeze applies to Mr. Lukashenko, senior members of his presidential administration, the ministers of education, information and justice, ranking members of Parliament, the prosecutor general and the head of the security service, still known by its Soviet-era abbreviation, the K.G.B.

The European Union's statement, issued in Brussels, called the officials on the list those "who are responsible for the violations of international electoral standards and the crackdown on civil society and the democratic opposition" around the March 19 election. The statement said the freeze also applied to "those natural or legal person, entities or bodies associated with them."

A European diplomat in the Belarussian capital, Minsk, said that meant family members or others, as well as trust funds or companies, that hold accounts abroad under other names. It also applies to stocks or other assets. A White House report issued before the election accused Mr. Lukashenko of personally enriching himself and asserted that he was "likely among the most corrupt leaders in the world."

Following the election, the police and security forces arrested dozens of protesters and shut down an encampment that lasted five days on the main square in Minsk. A second challenger, Aleksandr V. Kazulin, was arrested the next day and remains in prison, facing charges of organizing anti-government protests. Mr. Milinkevich, along with other senior opposition party leaders, were arrested in April and sentenced to two-week prison terms on lesser charges. They were released late last week.

The European diplomat said in a telephone interview that the decision would force the union's members to scrutinize financial transactions in search of Mr. Lukashenko's money abroad. "We suspect there is," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because his was not authorized to discuss the policy publicly. "But we've never gone after it before."

A senior State Department official in Washington said that the Bush administration would follow suit, though perhaps not for several weeks because of legal requirements involved in freezing foreign leaders' accounts. That official said the action would be disruptive, piling more pressure on a man the United States has declared Europe's last dictator.

"It disrupts financial activities that would either directly go through the U.S. and Europe or would go through indirectly," the official said.

The official explained that assets in Russia, for example, could also be barred from transfers to or through European and American banks. The new freeze also prohibits transfer into Belarus from European, depriving the listed officials of in-flows of cash.

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/18/world/europe/18cnd-belarus.html