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KGB confirms arrest of US lawyer Emanuel Zeltser two weeks ago

The Belarusian Committee for State Security (KGB) has officially confirmed that Emanuel Zeltser was arrested in Minsk on March 12.

The US lawyer’s secretary, Russian citizen Vladlena Funk, who was traveling with him, was also arrested, KGB spokesman Valery Nadtachayew told BelaPAN.

The two were charged under Part 2 of the Criminal Code’s Article 318 that penalizes the deliberate use of counterfeit documents by a group of people, he said.

Russian-born Zeltser, 54, who heads a non-governmental organization called the Russian-American Law Institute, was arrested after he arrived in the Belarusian capital city for meetings with clients. He has been held in the KGB detention center since then.

The KGB initially declined to comment on the arrest of the pair.

In 2001, Mr. Zeltser was a defense lawyer for Pavel Borodin, who is now state secretary of the Belarusian-Russian Union State, when he was arrested in New York City on money laundering charges.

In 1995, Mr. Zeltser sued Inkombank, once Russia’s second largest bank, in a US federal court, accusing it of misappropriating funds from depositors in collaboration with the Bank of New York. He previously worked for the bank, but claimed that he was dismissed from his post after initiating an investigation into evidence of theft and fraud.