Maryna Zolatava gives testimony in court

The Zavadski District Court of Minsk continues the criminal trial of Maryna Zolatava, TUT.BY chief editor, who is accused of omission of an executive. On February 19, the court questioned Maryna Zolatava as a defendant.

Yesterday it was reported that the publishing house Belarus Segodnya had withdrawn the pecuniary claim against Maryna Zolotova.

The questioning of TUT.BY chief editor started with a free presentation, informs Radio Freedom.

"I can state that I learned about the unauthorized access by the staff of the media portal to the BelTA paid subscription in March 2018," said Maryna Zolatava. "It was discussed in a telephone conversation with the editor Hanna Kaltyhina that we heard at yesterday's session. I disapproved of it and said that we would deal with it."

Having compared the contents of the newsfeed in a paid subscription and the regular newsfeed on the BelTA site, she concluded that it was impractical to become a paid member.

At the moment, the portal has formal contracts with the BelaPAN Agency, Reuters, TASS.

According to Maryna Zolatava, she regrets that she hadn't monitored her subordinates further and hadn't forbidden to use other people's passwords to access the BelTA subscription.

From August 2018, the TUT.BY portal almost completely abandoned the use of the information from BelTA, which in no way affected the growth of site traffic.

The court adjourned till February 25, when the oral arguments will be heard.