Lohvinau Publisher Moves Temporarily to Vilnius
“I can try to pass an exam to register the publishing house only in a year. However, I don’t intend to wait a year to do my favorite business,” said Ihar Lohvinau in an interview to TUT.by.
“We have business commitments with our partners, so we decided to organize book publishing in Vilnius where no licenses or permits are required. Meantime, we are preparing a specialist who will be sitting a qualifying exam this spring already in order to get the right to publish books here.
Ihar Lohvinau considers that moving the publishing business to Lithuania is not the best idea: logistics and tax expenses will make books at least 20 per cent more expensive.
The publisher thinks that licensing book publishing in Belarus has been introduced not only for ideological reasons, but also with the view of lobbying interests of state-run publishing houses.
The private publisher Lohvinau was ripped off the license in October 2013 by the Ministry of Information “because of rough violations of the law on licensing”. The so called violation stemmed from the fact that Lohvinau published the Belarus Press Photo 2011 album which was declared extremist by the Ashmiany court in 2013. The court decision was widely criticized as being biased and ungrounded.