Found it? Return it!

An instructive story happened in November 2017 with an employee of one of the cleaning companies in Vitebsk.

Ksenia (name changed) always conscientiously performed her duties of cleaning passenger cars.

Once again, having started cleaning, she noticed a mobile phone on one of the passenger seats and rejoiced "like a child". Having made sure that there was no one in the car, she put the phone in her pocket and continued to perform her duties. At the same time, Ksenia understood that by appropriating what she found, she was acting incorrectly.

Ksenia did not inform anyone about discovering and appropriating someone else's mobile phone, believing that since she found the phone, it now belonged to her. Ksenia also took no measures to return the phone to its rightful owner, although she could have handed the phone over to either the train conductor or the police officers.

After work, Ksenia went home and told her acquaintance Egor that she had found a lost phone, which she subsequently gave to Egor.

A week later, Egor inserted his SIM card into the device and started using the phone, mistakenly believing that no one was looking for the phone.

As it was subsequently found out, the owner of the specified phone, Anastasia, was returning home on the Minsk-Vitebsk passenger train and, upon arriving at the final station of Vitebsk, accidentally dropped her mobile phone while exiting the car. She noticed the loss only when approaching a public transport stop, after which she immediately returned to the car, but did not find the phone there.

She wrote a statement about the incident to the Vitebsk Department of Internal Affairs on Transport. During operational-search activities, police officers found the mobile phone and its new owner.

In this regard, a criminal case has been initiated against Ksenia under Part 1 of Article 205 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus on the grounds of secret theft of property (theft), and Ksenia has been brought to criminal responsibility.

So, remember - you cannot get away with appropriating what you find.

Senior Assistant to the Vitebsk
Transport Prosecutor
Junior Justice Advisor E.A. Kazakova