Vitebsk police are investigating the forgery of signature sheets in support of V. Provalsky

November 10, Vitebsk / Sergey Kotovets - BELTA/. The Internal Affairs Department of the Pervomaysky District Administration of Vitebsk is conducting an investigation into the forgery of signature sheets in support of Vladimir Provalsky's nomination as a presidential candidate. This was announced today by Olga Maksimovich, Chairperson of the Pervomaysky District Commission for the Election of the President of the Republic of Belarus in Vitebsk, at a meeting of the regional territorial election commission, a BELTA correspondent reports. Olga Maksimovich explained that 6,798 signature sheets in support of this contender were submitted to the district commission. During visual inspection, the sheets immediately raised serious doubts about their authenticity, as they resembled photocopies, and many of them contained identical information on the same people. The election commission members drew up an act and sent all the sheets for examination, which was carried out by the expert-criminalistic center at the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Regional Executive Committee. According to its results, it was established that all signature sheets were made by electrophotography with dry development and thermal fixing of the image on copying and duplicating equipment. "The commission sent an appeal to the Pervomaysky District Prosecutor's Office regarding the forgery of signature sheets, which in turn instructed the district internal affairs department to conduct an investigation," Olga Maksimovich said. All signatures in support of Vladimir Provalsky's nomination as a presidential candidate, collected in the Pervomaysky District of Vitebsk, have been declared unreliable, she noted. According to Vyacheslav Kryukovsky, Chairman of the Regional Election Commission, Vladimir Provalsky's initiative group submitted signature sheets with over 108,000 signatures to five territorial commissions in the region, with the vast majority of signature sheets being submitted to the Pervomaysky District Election Commission in Vitebsk. As a result of the preliminary verification, almost all signatures turned out to be photocopies and were not counted during the verification of their authenticity. Of the 687 signatures checked, only 118 were found to be authentic. Moreover, the signatures collected in the Oktyabrsky District of Vitebsk and the Vitebsk District were also not taken into account when determining the overall collection result, as the total number of unreliable signatures identified during the checks exceeded 15% of the total number of signatures in the signature sheets submitted to the territorial commissions of these districts. -0-