Former deputy and head of Belaruskali, Kalugin, kept $1.3 million in the bank, fraudulent businessman Laritsky – $3.2 million, “Lukashenko’s wallet” Oleksin – $36 million

Belarusian footprint on Credit Suisse accounts. One of the heroes of this investigation is a former deputy whose income is several times less than the amount in his Swiss account. The second is a businessman who has been behind bars twice, and in different countries. The third is a businessman close to the Belarusian authorities who traded oil products under gray schemes.

Data on clients of a large Swiss bank Credit Suisse received the German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung. It shared this leak with the OCCRP Organized Crime and Corruption Research Center, of which the BRC is a member. In the leak, we found more than 120 Belarusians who opened accounts with Credit Suisse.

In the course of this investigation, with the help of CyberPartizan, we checked Belarusian clients of Credit Suisse with a high level of risk: those associated with politics or convicted of crimes. From the general list, we selected three people who could use the secrecy of the Swiss banking system for dubious purposes.

One of the heroes of this investigation is a former deputy whose income is several times less than the amount in his Swiss account. The second is a businessman who has been behind bars twice, and in different countries. The third is a businessman close to the Belarusian authorities who traded oil products under gray schemes.

All of them could take advantage of the secrecy of the Swiss banking system for dubious purposes. Sometimes banks are not strict enough to check their customers. Former and current employees of Credit Suisse, speaking to OCCRP reporters, explained this corporate culture, which encourages risk for the sake of higher profits.

Honorary pension

Last day of summer 2008. An Audi car is waiting in line to leave Belarus for Poland. Behind the wheel – member of the House of Representatives Peter Kalugan.

He ends his third cadence in the status of a veteran of labor and an honorary citizen of Soligorsk. These regalia Kalugan received for work at Belaruskali. Having started his career at the enterprise as an ordinary locksmith, he rose to the rank of general director and held this post for almost ten years – from 1992 to 2001. The very next day after crossing the border Kalugahe opens an account with a Swiss bank Credit Suisse for an unnamed firm. At that time, he did not officially work in any company in Belarus – only as a deputy of the House of Representatives. In a year and seven months, almost $1.3 million will appear in this account.

With the help of CyberPartizan, we found out that the income Kalugafor seven years – from 2003 to 2009 – amounted to about $ 87 thousand. This is 15 times less than the amount in his Swiss account.

For explanations, we turned directly to Peter Kalugawell, but in a telephone conversation he could not clearly comment on our questions. We began to look for answers ourselves, in his biography.

Today Petru Kalugawell, 81 years old. He was born in Russia, studied at the Leningrad Mining Institute, and arrived in Belarus in 1966. Here he began working for Belaruskali, reaching the top of the career ladder in 1992. KalugaHe admitted that production volumes fell more than two times under him. But the quality of products was appreciated abroad, and the company entered international markets.

Also under control Kalugathe structure of Belaruskali has changed slightly. In 2000, the Shakhtospetsstroy division separated from it. Since Soviet times, it has been engaged in laying mines, in which the direct employees of Belaruskali then worked. Our source in the industry claims that one of the key owners of the already private enterprise Shakhtospetsstroy was its director Valery Startsev, and KalugaHe actively supported this privatization. Next year Kalugan left Belaruskali and focused on his parliamentary career.

In the fall of 2008, a couple of months after opening an account with Credit Suisse, the cadence ended Kalugaon in the House of Representatives. Already in 2009, he began working at Shakhtospetsstroy, for his former contractor, whom he helped to become a private trader. Moreover, the appointment Kalugaon the eve of a big project.

In January 2010, Belarus agreed to build the Garlyk mining and processing plant in Turkmenistan worth about $1 billion. The general contractor of the project, the Belgorkhimprom company, subcontracted Shakhtospetsstroy. Two months later on a Swiss account Kalugathe same $1.3 million appeared, which, as we have already found out, he could not earn in places of official employment.

The construction of the complex turned into a scandal. According to media reports, the Turkmen authorities accused Belarus of improper performance of the contract and filed a lawsuit with the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, commonly known as the Stockholm Arbitration. They estimated the damage at $900 million. In Belarus, these accusations were denied and a counterclaim for $400 million was filed. The completion of the proceedings has not yet been reported, but the potash plant in Turkmenistan was nevertheless put into operation. It happened in 2017, although the launch was planned two years earlier.

All this time Peter Kalugaand works at Shakhtospetsstroy. He has a small house in the Slutsk district, his wife has a four-room apartment near Komsomolskoye Lake in Minsk and a two-story cottage near the Soligorsk reservoir.

Your Swiss bank account Kalugan closed in August 2014.

Criminal Russia

We found two accounts with Albert Laritsky, a Belarusian, in the Swiss bank Credit Suisse. Both were opened at the beginning of 2011 – it was then that the story unfolded, after which the Russian governor and Laritsky himself ended up in prison. While the Russian enterprise associated with him was going bankrupt, receiving state loans, he was saving millions in his account in Switzerland. And after accusations of financial fraud, Laritsky seems to have taken part in a provocation against a liberal politician. He was recently released, and we were the first to know his version of events.

Albert Laritsky is from Gomel, he is 47 years old. In his native city in the 90s he started his first business – he sold alcohol wholesale and retail. Then Laritsky met businessman Yuri Zudheimer. He comes from Kazakhstan, but even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, he moved to Germany. There he began to manufacture filters and lubricants and opened their warehouse in Gomel.

Later, the roads of Zudheimer and Laritsky temporarily diverged. The first moved from Germany to Switzerland, and the second moved to Russia, where he became vice president of Zernostandart. In 2008, this agricultural holding bought out the shares of Novovyatsky Ski Plant and soon began its modernization, the plan of which was supported by the then governor of the region, Nikita Belykh.

This project brought Zudheimer and Laritsky back together. According to the German businessman, at the request of his Belarusian partner, he allocated about $40 million for the modernization of the Novovyatsky Combine. But the project failed, and the enterprise was mired in debt and became insolvent. Expecting to return the money invested in the plant, Zudheimer turned to the FSB, and in 2015 Laritsky was detained on suspicion of financial fraud.

According to investigators, the Belarusian businessman, who by that time had received a residence permit in Switzerland, under false contracts took loans from the Russian Sberbank to purchase equipment for the modernization of the plant, but withdrew the money received to his personal account in the same Credit Suisse bank.

Albert Laritsky commented on this for the BRC: “I live in Switzerland. Of course I have an account. And, of course, I transferred money from my company to this account. That is, I transferred money as an investment from my account to my company and then partially received this money back. Not all”.

We checked the history of Laritsky’s account, opened in February 2011 during the modernization of Novovyatsky Kombinat. In May 2011, it had about $3 million on it. The maximum amount on the second account was about $275,000 in March 2014. However, according to the investigation, as a result of financial fraud, Laritsky withdrew a much larger amount – about $ 10 million. At the trial, he fully admitted his guilt, but told us that he was forced to do this:

Laritsky considers his case politically motivated – fabricated in order to imprison the then governor of the Kirov region, Nikita Belykh. He was detained in 2016 red-handed while receiving a bribe in Moscow. As the prosecutor stated at the trial, Belykh received money for patronage over the Novovyatsky Ski Plant. Laritsky allegedly handed over €200,000 to the Belykh through intermediaries in 2011-2012, and Zudheimer – €400,000 in 2014-2016.

Prior to his appointment as governor in 2009, Nikita Belykh was the leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces, a Russian opposition bloc co-founded by Boris Nemtsov. Having become governor, Belykh left all opposition organizations, but he did not give up liberal views – he appointed Alexei Navalny as his adviser.

The international organization Transparency International suggests that the security forces could use Laritsky and Zudheimer in the Belykh case as a “torpedo”. This is the name of a person who, as part of an operational experiment, is sent to give a bribe to an official.

As a result, the court sentenced Laritsky to three years in prison, and Belykh to eight years, and he is still serving his sentence. Zudheimer was not charged, although Belykh was found guilty of taking a bribe from him, and was acquitted in the episode with Laritsky.

After his release, Laritsky worked for some time in Belarus, but then, at the request of Zudheimer, he again landed in prison – this time in Switzerland. He was recently released.

Smells like big money

In January 2012, an account for an unnamed company of a Belarusian businessman appeared in the Swiss bank Credit Suisse. In July, it has more than $36 million. By that time, Lithuanian businessman Witold Tomashevsky was already cooperating with Credit Suisse Trade Finance. He has an account with Savoil in a Swiss bank. This company, according to our source, is involved in the 2011-2012 solvent and thinner scheme.

At that time, Russia supplied oil and oil products to Belarus without charging customs duties. They had to be paid only if Belarus exported oil products made from Russian oil. But there were a number of goods that were not subject to duties. For example, solvents and thinners. Under their guise, Belarusian businessmen began to actively resell Russian oil products, thus avoiding taxes.

As we managed to find out, among their European partners was, for example, the Lithuanian company One Energy. In 2011, its revenue exceeded $1 billion, and a quarter of the income came from solvents and thinners.

But the bulk of supplies under this scheme went through Witold Tomashevsky’s Savoil, our source claims. For five months of work, the revenue of this company exceeded $800 million, and in 2012 it approached $5 billion. Net profit for two years is over $80 million. Tomashevsky is a long-time partner of the disgraced Belarusian businessman Yuri Chizh. We talked about their long-term contacts in one of the previous investigations. Their main joint project is just a scheme with solvents and thinners. Together with the Lithuanian investigative center Siena, we found out that on the Belarusian side, Triple company Yuri Chizh and two other companies, Triple-Energo and Belneftegaz, participated in the scam. Both are connected with businessman Alexei Oleksin: he headed the first, and owned the second with his wife.

At that time, Oleksin worked for Chizh, and it is he who is credited with the idea of ​​​​the scheme with solvents and thinners. In January 2012, at the height of this scheme, Oleksin opened the same account in a Swiss bank, which later turned out to be $ 36 million. We called the businessman, to find out where he got the money from, but he declined to comment to us. In 2012, Russia stopped the scheme with solvents and thinners, and two years later Oleksin closed his account with Credit Suisse.
The paths of Chizh and Oleksin diverged. The first has already been behind bars twice, and the second has become one of the most influential businessmen in Belarus and in 2021 fell under EU and US sanctions as Lukashenka’s “wallet”.

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