Businessmen get 5 years for illegal IP-telephony usage
Author: Mikhail Doroshevich
20/01/2003
In December, two Belarusian businessmen had their property seized and were sentenced to 5 years in prison for illegal IP-telephony usage.
Intercom, their company, accessed international telephone communications by illegally side-stepping Beltelecom, the Belarusian telecommunications monopoly.
Intercom's activities (1,198,101 connections) resulted in losses to Beltelecom totalling E119,305 (BYR379,560,000).
Without any law specific to telecommunications-based crime, the businessmen's activities resulted in severe punishment, where elsewhere the sentence would have been more lenient.
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