Report of Chairman of Belarus’ Investigative Committee Dmitry Gora

Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko has met with Chairman of the Investigative Committee Dmitry Gora.

“Dmitry Yuryevich, let’s skip self-evaluation reports and jump right into the main thing,” the head of state said at the beginning of the meeting.

The President noted that he had given an instruction to speed up investigation of extremism cases and asked to update him on the progress. “We had a lot of criminal cases related to extremism. There was even a backlog of such cases, figuratively speaking. Back then we agreed that we should promptly handle criminal cases related to extremism. Where are we now?” the President asked.

Aleksandr Lukashenko also mentioned the creation of a cybercrime unit within the Investigative Committee. “How is it doing? I come across an increasing number of media reports saying that this is a very important area of work as cybercrimes are not decreasing, unfortunately,” the Belarusian leader said. “That is why this unit was created. What is the situation in this field, how is this unit handling its tasks,” the President asked.

Another topic discussed at the meeting of the President with the head of the Investigative Committee dealt with the state of affairs in the committee itself, work with the staff. The head of state recalled that earlier, before the appointment of Dmitry Gora, there were certain alarming signals about the Investigative Committee: “Therefore, the senior officials of the committee had to be brought to their senses. You took charge of the Investigative Committee. What has changed since you were appointed? How do the committee and its employees work?” Aleksandr Lukashenko said.

According to Dmitry Gora, one of the priorities of the Investigative Committee is to fulfill the instruction “to reduce the number of pending criminal cases related to extremism”, as well as to identify and investigate new crimes of this type together with operational services, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB.