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У белоруса в Греции украли паспорт — 10 дней ушло на то, чтобы получить справку о возвращении домой
24.05.2018
Belarusian Dmitry Skums went with friends to Greece to sail around the Cyclades archipelago. On May 13, he was supposed to fly home, but a day before that, his passport was stolen.
— The passport was probably stolen on the street. On May 13, I called the hotline of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since there is no Belarusian embassy in Greece. It turned out that the nearest country with our embassy is Bulgaria. I called there on May 14, — says Dmitry.
If a Belarusian abroad loses their passport or it is stolen, to return home, they need to obtain a re-entry certificate at the nearest Belarusian embassy.
The website of the Belarusian embassy in Bulgaria states that, according to the legislation, the issuance period for the re-entry certificate is up to 1 month from the date of application. In practice, if all necessary documents are available, the certificate can be issued on the same day. If a citizen does not have identity documents, identity verification is required. This takes from one to several days. The re-entry certificate is issued after identity verification.
To obtain a re-entry certificate, you need to submit an application for its issuance, a statement indicating the circumstances of the passport loss, two colored photographs measuring 35?45 mm, a report about what happened to the passport, for example, from the police. You also need to pay a consular fee of 20 euros. If the embassy is not in the country where you lost your passport, you will also have to pay for the shipment of documents.
There is an embassy of Russia in Athens, and the issue can be resolved through it. There, you need to submit a package of documents, including a police report regarding the stolen passport and a completed application form. You also need to pay a fee of 20 euros, 20 euros for shipment, and 7 euros for the bank fee. The total amount is 47 euros. Russians send the documents by email to the Belarusian embassy in Sofia.
At the same time, the payment needs to be transferred to a bank account. Without this payment, the Russian embassy in Athens does not accept the package of documents.
— They refused to dictate the bill to me at the Belarusian embassy or send it by e-mail. As a result, I had to go once again to the Russian embassy on the outskirts of the city to find out. I went and got it, and it turned out that in Greece it can only be paid by someone who has a bank account. And to open an account, you need a passport. We couldn't transfer the payment through the Minsk bank, so we had to ask our friends in Israel. They sent the money, but something didn't go through there," says Dmitry. — In theory, in special circumstances, a certificate of return can be issued free of charge. But, as I was told, the embassy accountant would not allow me to send it for free.
The Belarusian Embassy in Bulgaria (in Greece and Cyprus concurrently) explains the current situation by saying that for some reason, Dmitry's friends from Israel did not receive payment of the fee and shipping services to their account. And without this, they have no right to send a certificate of return. At the same time, they add that there have never been any problems in such situations, since the mechanism is fine-tuned.
— A person applies to the Russian consulate, and we receive the documents on the same day or the next. We make them and send them out. But since the payment must be submitted to the Russian consulate, they did not send the documents until she was gone. This is a government account, and money should be credited to it. We are being checked," the embassy explained.
The diplomatic mission says that when they realized that Dmitry did not have the opportunity to ask the Greeks to help pay the bill, they offered to contact the honorary Consul of Belarus in Greece. Dmitry said that he did not see the point in this, since the honorary consul is in Thessaloniki, which is about 500 km from Athens.
The information about the Belarusian came to the Embassy in Bulgaria from the Russian Embassy in Greece only on Friday, May 18. As a result, the payment still failed and I had to request permission from the consular department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to issue a return certificate without payment confirmation.
The embassy noted that, according to their information, on May 23 at 10:53 a.m., the certificate for the young man's return home was already at the Russian Embassy in Athens. Dmitry says that since, according to his information, the document arrived late on May 23, he will be able to pick it up only on May 24 in the morning. This means that ten days have passed from the moment of contacting the Belarusian Embassy in Bulgaria before he takes the certificate.
Source: www.tut.by
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