BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

28/05/2008

U.S. citizen Zeltser to face trial on drug charges

MINSK, May 28 (RIA Novosti) - The case of a U.S. national, held in custody for more than two months in Minsk, accused of using false documents and smuggling drugs, has been handed over to a Belarusian court, a KGB spokesman said Wednesday.

Soviet-born lawyer and financial expert Emanuel Zeltser was detained by the Belarusian security services along with his secretary on arrival in Belarus on March 12 initially accused of using forged documents. Zelster was officially charged Tuesday with drug smuggling and possession.

"The case of U.S. national Emanuel Zeltser, detained in the middle of March at Minsk-2 Airport has been sent to court," KGB spokesman Valery Nadtochayev said. "He has been charged with the smuggling and illegal possession of drugs and psychotropic substances."

Nadtochayev, who heads the KGB press service, said that over 100 tablets had been seized from Zeltser and that it had taken a great deal of time to check all the medicines in his possession.

The U.S. State Department expressed its concern in late April and May over Zeltser's deteriorating health, allegedly witnessed by a U.S. consular officer, granted access to the suspect.

The State Department requested that Belarusian authorities release the lawyer on humanitarian grounds. Zeltser's brother Mark said Emanuel, who suffers from arthritis and diabetes, had not been permitted to take his required daily medication.

But the KGB spokesman said Zeltser's physical condition permitted him to be held in a KGB confinement facility.

Born in the Soviet republic of Moldova, Zeltser emigrated in the 1970s and received his license to practice law in 1990.

He became known for exposing money laundering schemes between the Bank of New York and a Russian bank in the 1990s.

He was also a defense attorney for Pavel Borodin, the secretary of the Russia-Belarus Union State, who was arrested in New York on money laundering charges in 2001.

Zeltser's name has recently appeared in the media linked to a scandal over the estate of late Georgian tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili, a former business partner of fugitive Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky.

After Patarkatsishvili died in February 2008, his estate became the center of a legal dispute between the Georgian businessman's wife supported by Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili's distant cousin Joseph Kay represented by Zeltser.

Source:

http://en.rian.ru/world/20080528/108721555.html

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