State Committee of Court Expertise interested in international co-operation development

The Committee’s Chairman, Andrey Shved, believes that the experience and achievements of expert witnesses are an integral part of the development of national justice. With this in mind, Minsk gathered representatives of the major European organisations in the field (uniting 64 expert establishments from 36 countries), ENFSI, on February 4th-5th. Under its initiative, the meeting moved from London to Minsk and Belarus has hopes for close business co-operation with its foreign colleagues.

Representatives of the major European expert agencies attended lectures, exchanged opinions and familiarised themselves with Belarusian specialists and the experience of working as part of a single state body, Mr. Shved met the ENFSI Chairman and the General Director of Belgium’s National Institute of Criminalistics and Criminology, Jan de Kinder, to discuss the prospects for collaboration.

Belarus is ready to help Europe in its fight against drugs. According to Mr. Shved, the experience of our country in this field is unique and is related to the legal mechanism which acknowledges prohibited substances and Belarus’ quick response to infringements. As Mr. Shved noted, ‘designer’ drugs move mostly from the east to the west and Belarus receives data on new types of psychotropic substances earlier than Europeans. In turn, Mr. de Kinder noted that the European court experts view co-operation with Belarus as an important aspect and, in the future, the issue of whether to accept our country into the European organisation will be considered. “The European network of court-expert establishments never stops working to improve the quality of its studies. Much has been done in Minsk in this respect recently I’m convinced our co-operation will be mutually beneficial,” he added.