MINSK, 28 February (BelTA) – Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko met with Interior Minister Igor Shunevich to receive his report on 28 February, BelTA has learned.
First of all, the head of state asked the minister to brief him on the performance of law enforcement bodies in 2018. “Please brief me on your service and operational activities. In the near future we will seriously analyze the performance of law enforcement agencies in general. The peculiarity is that I don't need just the reports of any law enforcement bodies, I would like you to point out existing problems. In this case, in the operation of our police,” Alexander Lukashenko said.
The president also asked about grave crime statistics and clear-up rate, the investigation of criminal cases which are under his control. “Besides, tell me about the major concerns in our society. It is very important,” the head of state said.
Alexander Lukashenko also spoke about the personnel policy at the Interior Ministry. He asked if there are any problems in this regard and if any decisions are necessary. “AS far as I can judge from the written report, the personnel shortage is about 10% in certain departments. Maybe, we should not do anything special there and reduce personnel numbers in some other departments,” the president suggested.
According to the head of state, there was a suggestion to toughen responsibility for DUI in the country. “This toughening will not, perhaps, require this number [of traffic policemen]. I am saying it as an example. Although there has already been a serious personnel reduction, so it will be not easy to reduce personnel numbers even more. But nothing is impossible,” Alexander Lukashenko said. “Probably, we will not be able to answer all these questions today, we will better address them at the big conference.”
The head of state warned that police will be in the spotlight at the coming meeting because this is the biggest division in the system of law enforcement bodies. “And our police are related to many home and even foreign policy issues,” the president added.
Alexander Lukashenko also asked about the performance of the Belarusian association of physical education and sport Dinamo and Dinamo Minsk HC. “We need to discuss these issues,” he remarked.
According to Igor Shunevich, the operative situation in Belarus in general remained the same in 2018. “We managed to keep this level of security and keep our promises. Besides, we satisfied the demand of our society as far as the level of security that they are used to is concerned,” the minister emphasized.
Last year the number of registered crimes fell by almost 3% to 83,800. The number of grievous crimes and extremely grievous crimes also reduced by 3.7% and 5.4% respectively. The number of rapes and robberies decreased significantly by 17.4% and 22.4% respectively. At the same time, the number of registered intended attempts to inflict grievous bodily harm, frauds and petty street crimes increased by 3.9%, 3.2% and 0.9% respectively.
Belarusian police stopped 29 channels of drug trafficking and transit last year. As many as eight labs for making psychotropic substances and 42 facilities for growing drug-containing crops were detected.
The number of detected corruption cases fell by 5.7% to 6,300 in 2018. This happened because there were fewer cases involving counterfeiting, malpractice in office, forgery and barratry. At the same time, the number of bribery cases went up 6% (from 118 in 2017 to 1,186 in 2018). This is the maximum figure in the past decade.
Criminal cases involving corruption and other economic crimes were opened against 41 civil servants.
