The investigation into the criminal case of creating a pornographic website has been completed in Vitebsk

The Investigative Committee of the Republic of Belarus for the Vitebsk region has completed the investigation of a criminal case initiated against a 25-year-old resident of Novopolotsk, who created and administered a pornographic website for 6 years.

During the preliminary investigation, it was established that the accused, from October 2007 to December 2013, with the aim of distributing and advertising pornographic materials on the Internet, including those depicting minors, in animated form, using his web programming skills, independently developed and created a new website, registered it, and ensured round-the-clock access to the website for any Internet user. Being the owner of the website and having the rights to update, add, edit, and delete information on the website, he improved the website's visibility in search engines for a specific list of keywords and increased the website's ranking in various ratings. For mercenary motives, he placed advertising blocks and links on the website pages, which provided transitions to other websites offering monetary rewards based on commission fees accrued from visitor transitions to a specific advertiser's Internet resource.

To increase the website's popularity, the accused, with the help of an unknown person recruited online, selected photographic images and video clips of a pornographic nature, copied them to storage media, edited them, and created new pornographic materials. He provided the recruited employee with the login and password to the website's control panel and explained the procedure for filling the website with new information. After that, at regular intervals, he added new files with pornographic materials in animated form to the pages of the aforementioned website, advertised and distributed them by providing website users with the opportunity to view materials online, comment on the viewed images and video clips, and copy pornographic materials to their personal computers.

Following the investigation, the man has been charged with committing a crime under Part 2 of Article 343-1 (production, storage for the purpose of distribution and advertising, distribution and advertising of pornographic materials depicting a person known to be under the age of eighteen, committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy, using the global computer network Internet) of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus.

Currently, the preliminary investigation has been completed. An extensive body of evidence has been gathered in the criminal case, including the examination of numerous computer equipment, the appointment and conduct of a number of forensic examinations, and detailed work on studying the personality of the accused.

The criminal case has been transferred to the prosecutor for forwarding to court.

Official Representative

Investigative Committee for the Vitebsk Region

Inna Gorbacheva