For the first time ever a journalist was compensated for non-pecuniary damage

Judge of the Petropavlovsk City Court No. 2 Dinara Ispaeva, satisfied the claim of the editor-in-chief of the "Kvartal" newspaper Elena Kuznetsova, for compensation for non-pecuniary damage for unlawful criminal prosecution in the amount of 700 thousand tenge.

The reason for the criminal prosecution was two articles by the journalist published last November   and telling about the property conflict of two business entities. The persons mentioned in  the articles considered it written defamation and demanded to institute criminal proceedings against E. Kuznetsova under part 3 of article 130 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan (slander committed with the use of mass media and connected with accusation of person in commission of corruption, grievous or especially grave crime, as well as resulted the grave consequences).

On March 15 Judge Saule Litfullina recognized the arguments of the prosecutors as valid and sentenced the editor-in-chief to one year of restriction of freedom with the probation supervision.

On June 18, the Criminal Appeals Board of the North Kazakhstan Regional Court reversed the judgement as it was found that no crime had been committed. After that E. Kuznetsova filed a claim for compensation for non-pecuniary damage.

According to data from Adil Soz, any Tom, Dick or Harry accuse journalists  of slander.Sometimes guilty verdicts are reversed. But it was for the first time ever in Kazakhstan that a journalist demanded - and achieved! - compensation for non-pecuniary damage for worries, money, professional troubles caused by an illegal sentence.