The ex-mayor of Estonia’s resort town of Narva-Joesuu has been sentenced to four months in jail for pirating Russian TV programmes, an Estonian prosecutor’s spokeswoman told AFP Tuesday.
“The court found [Juri] Andreyev had illegally transmitted programmes of Moscow TV channels to his clients who paid his private company and had thus violated the law,” Mari Luuk said.
“His pirating activity could have been punished by a fine or up to three years in prison. The court decided to imprison him for four months,” Luuk said.
Andreyev was also ordered to pay 32 760 kroons ($3 000) to the Baltic Authors’ Union.
Andreyev who retransmitted Russian NTV, ORT and RTR programmes from 2003 to 2005 accused the judge presiding over his case of being motivated by personal revenge for private reasons.
But Judge Rafkat Minzatov called Andreyev’s accusations groundless. Both ex-mayor Andreyev and judge Minzatov are ethnic Russians.
Minzatov ruled Andreyev had no license to use the TV programmes for retransmission and his pirating activities violated international conventions on the transmission of radio and TV programmes.
North-east Estonia where Narva-Joesuu is located was settled predominantly with ethnic Russians after World War II. The region is known for bizarre cases of cross-border smuggling between Estonia and Russia.
Almost a year ago 11 suspects were nabbed over a smuggling operation pumping thousands of litres of vodka from Russia to Estonia via a two-kilometre underwater pipeline.
The illegal pipeline was submerged in a water reservoir located between Russia and Estonia near the Estonian border town of Narva.
The operation was profitable as the price of vodka in Russia is nearly one third lower than in Estonia, a member of the European Union since May 2004. — AFP