Nearly 25-fold underpayment to the family of the deceased could cost the director of a Novopolotsk enterprise his freedom

June 27, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA /. A criminal case has been initiated against the head of a Novopolotsk enterprise for reducing the compensation payment to the widow of a worker killed on the job by almost 25 times, the official representative of the Investigative Committee Department for the Vitebsk Region, Inna Gorbacheva, told a BELTA correspondent. Employees of the Vitebsk region's economic crimes unit conducted an inspection into the illegal reduction of compensation payments stipulated by the Labor Code and the company's collective agreement in case of a worker's death on the job. Law enforcement agencies found that by drawing up forged documents, the director of a joint-stock company within Novopolotsk's housing and communal services system unreasonably reduced the amount of material compensation to the deceased's family. In accordance with the law, the employer was obliged to pay the widow 120 average monthly salaries. However, on the director's instructions, a forged protocol of a trade union committee meeting of the joint-stock company was drawn up, according to which, in case of an employee's death, the compensation amount was calculated based on the number of years worked: one average monthly salary for each year of work. The document was backdated, and the organization, based on the allegedly held meeting a week before the incident, transferred only Br9 million to the widow instead of the stipulated Br224.5 million. A criminal case has been initiated against the director under Part 3 of Article 426 (abuse of power resulting in grave consequences). The sanction of this article provides for up to ten years of imprisonment. Currently, the Novopolotsk department of the Investigative Committee is working to restore the violated rights of the widow and gather evidence in this case. -0-