BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

01/06/2008

Belarus KGB finished inquiry in US lawyer's case, interrogated Boris Berezovsky

Belarus' State Security Committee, KGB, has completed its investigation into the activities of a US lawyer, who was arrested at an airport in Minsk on March 12 as he arrived in Belarus for meetings with unnamed clients, daily Kommersant reported. Emanuel Zeltser, a Russian-born US lawyer who is an expert on organized crime in the former Soviet Union faces drug-smuggling charges more than two months after his and his secretary's arrest by Belarusian security agents, news agencies are reporting from Minsk, referring to KGB spokesman Valery Nadtochayev.

The 54-year-old was initially charged with using false documents, for which he could get three years in prison if convicted. It is not clear why the latest charges coming from the KGB took so long to be filed. Zeltser is kept in the remand prison of the Belarus KGB.

The case of Zeltser - whose clients include a Georgian billionaire and opposition politician Badri Patarkatsishvili and a Kremlin-connected official - has prompted protests from the United States, which says his health is failing. Zeltser traveled to Minsk to try to show that the contents of Patarkatsishvili's should prevent the sale of his oil company in Belarus by President Alexander Lukashenko. When Georgian billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili died, his assets became the subject of a dispute pitting the widow backed by Boris Berezovsky, against his step cousin, Joseph Kay, who is represented by Zeltser. The KGB and Patarkatsishvili's wife have called the will a forgery.

Belarus investigators have questioned the Russian oligarch and Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky, too, it has been told to daily Kommersant by Berezovsky himself. He said he had been interrogated in the case of the US lawyer Emanuel Zeltser.

Boris Berezovsky has informed that he hadn't met one investigator, but the whole operational and investigative team from Belarus. "They asked to testify about Zeltser, in particular, what he and Joseph Kay are laying claims for. I told everything I knew," the paper cites Berezovsky.

Source:

http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1564

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