How Sanctions Hit Lukashenka’s Close Associates
- 28.08.2021, 12:14
The dictator's "wallets" scatter like cockroaches.
The Belsat TV channel told how businessmen close to the regime of Aliaksandr Lukashenka fell under the powerful blows of Western sanctions.
Aliaksei Aleksin
It was expected that Aliaksei Aleksin will fall under sanctions at the end of 2020, but he was crossed off the list at the last moment. According to unofficial information, Latvia insisted on this since the oligarch also conducts business there. However, in December, the sanctions affected the IT company Synesis, a quarter of which belonged to Aleksin. The first sanctions maneuver was associated with just this asset: the wife of the oligarch Ina Aleksina and the Energo-Oil-Invest company left the list of owners.
Sanctions against Aleksin himself were introduced only in the summer of 2021. The oligarch was ready for personal sanctions: back in January 2021, he left the co-owners of his key assets (Energo-Oil and Belneftegaz) and signed them over to his sons, Vital and Dzmitry.
The sons of the oligarch are not public people. The eldest son Dzmitry has been involved in his father's business since at least 2013, including in Latvia. At the same time, it is difficult to say whether he once played a real role in business or was simply a nominal co-owner of some assets. Outside the business world, Dzmitry is known only for his friendship with the Tiani-Tolkai band, he even starred in their video in 2008.
The name of 23-year-old Vital Aleksin has never sounded in public space until 2021. In open sources, you can only find out about him that the son of a businessman played in the amateur football team Energo-Oil. According to belsat.eu, Vital graduated from BSEU in 2018, he did not really stand out at the university. Some classmates did not even know that he was the son of a person close to Lukashenka, although they understood that Vital was from a wealthy family. What Vitaly did after high school is not known exactly.
However, the transfer of key assets to sons turned out to be an ineffective measure since not only Aliaksei Aleksin personally fell under the sanctions but also his assets. In August, the United States blacklisted Energo-Oil and Belneftegaz. Thus, the scheme to bypass the sanctions did not work here.
Because of Energo-Oil and Belneftegaz, the Aleksin family owned MTBank. But back in June, this asset was sold to the UAE-registered company Stoneva Limited by businessman Romeo Abdo. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.
Romeo Abdo is a native of Lebanon, living in Belarus since 1993. “I have become a part of this country and do not distinguish myself from the Belarusians. My wife is Belarusian,” he said in an interview. Abdo is a co-founder of BNK Estate, which has built Galileo shopping center, Rubin Plaza business center, and Silver Tower in Minsk. He was also involved in the construction of shopping centers Europe and Riga.
Nothing is known about Romeo Abdo's connections with Aleksin: his business partners are Nepalese investors who, among other things, own large banks in their homeland. According to Nasha Niva, there is still no agreement in business circles on how to consider the purchase transaction of the Belarusian bank - as decorative or real. Therefore, now the Western partners have demanded proof from MTBank that the deal was not fictitious. "They do not want to deal with the sanctions," a source told NN.
The Aleksin family has officially lost its Latvian assets, the Mamas D and Latgales Alus D companies. Now Latgales Alus is wholly owned by the businessman from Daugavpils Aleksandrs Grahovskis, who was previously a business partner of the Aleksin family. And Mamas D on paper belongs to the director of the company Alexander Kiselev.
Mikalai Varabei
Mikalai Varabei came under EU sanctions back in December 2020. Then he signed his basic asset - Krasny Bor - over to Alesya Berezhnaya, Vyacheslav Atrakhimovich, and Irina Pankratova.
Berezhnaya and Atrakhimovich are top managers of the oligarch, they hold the positions of director and chief accountant of the Interservice company. Irina Pankratova is also hardly an independent figure: what is known about her is that she was an individual entrepreneur in Navapolatsk in the early 2010s.
Krasny Bor is a 100% owner of the largest private Belarusian oil trader, Intersevis, and already 99.94% of Absolutbank, 100% of the Oil Bitumen Plant, and 75% of a special exporter of oil products - a new oil company - are registered with Interservice. Thus, having withdrawn from the ownership of Krasny Bor, Varabei took his main assets in the oil and gas and banking spheres out of the sanctions for a certain period of time.
However, this scheme lost its meaning when the EU and the US began to impose sanctions against specific Varabei's companies. And on August 9, the United States immediately imposed sanctions against Interservice, Absolutbank, Oil Bitumen Plant, and NOC.
Also, BelKazTrans and BelKazTrans Ukraine were blacklisted (the latter company is registered in the name of the oligarch's son, his full namesake). These firms were involved in the transit of coal and the supply of Russian oil products to Ukraine, bypassing the local sanctions.
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Immediately after the imposition of US sanctions, Mikalai Varabei Jr. left the ranks of the founders of BelKazTrans Ukraine. And in July, the daughter-in-law of the oligarch Valery Varabei left Ukrbelnefteprodukt, although no one imposed sanctions against her. In both cases, there was no question of rewriting assets: both the son and daughter-in-law of the oligarch were simply excluded from the founders. The firms are now owned by their former partners, little-known Ukrainian businessmen.
Aliaksandr Zaitsau
Zaitsau's main assets are Sohra Overseas and Bremino Group, registered in the UAE and developing the Bremino-Orsha industrial and logistics complex (co-owners are Varabei and Aleksin). Both companies were included in the EU sanctions list in June, along with Zaitsau. And in August, the United States imposed restrictions on the Bremino Group. The oligarch's attempts to hide these assets from sanctions were not noticed. It is not excluded that Zaitsau considered it simply pointless, because the companies, taking into account their reputation, would have come under sanctions in any case.
But, in Ukraine, Zaitsau left the founders of Sigma Technology, which supplies thermal imagers, night vision devices, and accessories for small arms to security forces. Since 2018, Sigma has regularly participated in and won government tenders in Ukraine.
Since July, 55% of Sigma Technology has been owned by the Latvian company Electrooptika, and 45% by the Ukrainian law firm De Lege Lata. Belsat.eu previously reported in its investigation that Electrooptika (its founders are Latvian citizens Marks Blats and Angela Shakina), along with Sohra Overseas and the state-owned Belspetsvneshtekhnika, was the owner of an important Belarusian military-industrial complex Kidma Tech. At the same time, Electrooptika has a number of signs of a shell company: it is not excluded that it is de facto controlled by Zaitsau.
The further fate of Sohra Overseas at Kidma Tech is still unclear. In the spring, the company was turned into an open joint-stock company, Belarusbank was appointed as a depository, and the shares were allowed to circulate on the stock exchange. At the same time, it is impossible to understand from the official statement who is now the owner of Kidma Tech shares.
Mikhail Gutseriev
Mikhail Gutseriev implemented his largest project in Belarus through GCM Global Energy PLC: this British company is a co-owner of the Slavkali enterprise, which is building the Nezhynski mining and processing plant. Earlier, the owner of GCM Global Energy PLC was Mikhail Gutseriev himself, but, after the introduction of EU sanctions in June, he transferred his stake to his younger brother, Sait-Salam.
In August, immediately after the announcement of British sanctions, it became known that Mikhail Gutseriev had transferred to his brother his block of shares in the companies Neftisa and RussNeft. Also, the oligarch left the post of head of the board of directors of RussNeft. After that, the company even invited legal consultants who were supposed to confirm that Gutseriev now does not control RussNeft and there is no violation of sanctions regulation.
The sanctions had indirect consequences for the business of Mikhail Gutseriev's son, Said. Nobody personally imposed restrictions against him, but, against the background of recent events, he sold his stakes in three crypto exchanges - Currency.com, Capital.com, and Zubr.io. The buyer of Zubr.io were the international crypto-exchange FTX (Zubr.io) and Viktor Prokopenya (Currency.com, Capital.com).
Said's representatives say the deal has been in preparation since last year. However, experts are convinced that this is the result of Western sanctions since all business associated with Gutseriev has become toxic for European partners.
Soon after that, it became known that Said Gutseriev had also resigned from the post of general director of the oil and gas company ForteInvest. Although, Said remains the owner of the Belarusian Paritetbank through the Cypriot firm Beristore Holdings Limited.
Alexander Shatrov
The IT company Synesis, which develops and distributes video surveillance and analytics systems, came under EU sanctions back in December 2020. In the spring, Synesis tried to hide its subsidiaries from sanctions: the founder of the IT company Alexander Shatrov became the owner of 24x7 Panoptes and Synesis Stratus instead of Synesis. Another four affiliated companies changed their names, dropping out the word Synesis from there.
The public safety monitoring platform Kipod created by Synesis has become an important tool for intelligence agencies to identify and prosecute protesters during the 2020 events. It is because of this that the company came under sanctions.
However, in June 2021, Alexander Shatrov himself was included in the sanctions list. A few days before that, Shatrov re-registered 81% of Synesis to the director of the company Yuri Serbenkov and also left the owners of Synesis Stratus.
In August, it became known that Alexander Shatrov, his brother Piotr and business partner Nikolai Ptitsyn had left the ownership of the Russian branch of Synesis. Now the asset belongs to the little-known Alexander Shestakov, who in May became one of the co-owners of another Russian project of the company - Camera Biay LLC.
The Shatrov brothers and their companion Nikolai Ptitsyn also left the list of owners of the Stigma Soft company, which monitors the transit of goods in Belarus. Now 100% of the company (previously - 75%) belong to the Belneftegaz company, which is controlled by the Aleksin family. Interestingly, the re-registration took place on August 9 - and on the same day, it became known that Belneftegaz (as well as Aleksin personally) was included in the US sanctions list.