BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

20/03/2008

U.S. has made no inquiry on Zeltser's whereabouts so far - ministry

MINSK. March 20 (Interfax) - The Belarusian Foreign Ministry has not received any inquiry from the U.S. side regarding the whereabouts of Emanuel Zeltser, a famous U.S. lawyer apprehended in Minsk, spokesman for the Belarusian Foreign Ministry Andrei Popov said at a briefing on Thursday.

"The Foreign Ministry does not have information on whether the U.S. side made inquires regarding the whereabouts of Zeltser," Popov said.

A source with Belarusian law enforcement told Interfax earlier that Zeltser and Russian citizen Vladlena Funk (Bluzkova) were detained in Minsk at the insistence of Russian law enforcement agencies on March 17.

Some media organizations earlier reported referring to employees of the American Russian Law Institute (ARLI), of which Zeltser is the director, that the arrest of the lawyer could be linked in particular to a case of a deceased Russian businessman, a former client of Zeltser's.

The U.S. embassy in Belarus did not refute reports on the detention of the U.S. citizen; however, it refrained from commenting further, referring to the law on the protection of privacy.

According to some media organizations, Zeltser was apprehended on March 12.

Zeltser is a former Soviet emigrant. He is an expert on organized crime and money laundering in Russia and former Soviet republics. He was a lawyer for State Secretary of the Russian-Belarusian Union State Pavel Borodin, who was detained in New York, in 2000 - 2001.

Source:

http://www.interfax.com/3/376417/news.aspx

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