Anton Radniankou on how Belarus evades sanctions by exporting corruption · #DNL31 #OrganisedCrime

Transcript of Anton Radniankous talk at #DNL31 Organised Crime: A Global Business, in the panel Politics, Money & Rifles: Exposing Global Mafias, Authoritarian Power & Corruption with Vincenzo Musacchio, Pleurad Xhafa, Dritan Zagani, Andrea Dip, Anton Radniankou & Verena Zoppei.

Thank you for the invitation. I will talk a bit about corruption in Belarus and how the situation overall has developed during the last few years. But before this, a few words about Belarus since it's not a super famous country.

2020, with the presidential election, was a crucial year. I would say that we had a Belarus before 2020 and a Belarus after 2020. Before 2020 it was country with population about 95.5 million people, with a soft authoritarian regime. Lukashenka had ruled the country since 1994, quite a long time, but we still had several political opposition parties and political activists, and although official TV channels were completely controlled we had quite a lot of independent media online, and a lot of NGOs and grassroots activities. So in comparison to the current situation, we actually had quite good circumstances.

At the same time the belarussian economy traditionally was very dependent on Russia, but Lukashenka‘s authorities tried somehow to diversify this situation, with 40% of Belarusian export going to Russia and 30% going to the European Union. As we are talking about corruption today, in 2020 Belarus was number 66 on the Corruption Perception Index, so not very good, but also not terrible.

In 2020 so we had presidential elections. At the beginning of the year, the perception was that this would be a non-event. No one expected anything big, but then very strong candidates appeared, and we had a super-energized campaign, the biggest campaign in the history of independent Belarus. But at the end of the campaign in August 2020, Lukashenka said he had won the election with 82% of the votes. These are his traditional numbers, he never got less than 80% according to official statistics. But people got angry, and Lukashenka’s police started beating up people.

Around 50,000 people went to prison for several years. Right now we have 1,500 official political prisoners, and about 1,500 already released from prison having completed their sentences and looking at the number of political prisoners per person per capita, it seems that only China’s numbers are higher. At the same time, polls show that opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya had more than 50% of the votes and Lukashenka had about 20% of votes.

When people ask why Lukashenka is still in power, the main answer is that Putin and the Kremlin supported him both economically and, I would say, militarily. Putin said that he was ready to send his police if Lukashenka asked him. This support was very important for Lukashenka back then. Belarus, after 2022 when the war started in Ukraine, supported Putin. He is a co-aggressor in this war, and the situation in Belarus deteriorated even more.

So now we in full isolation from Western countries. Economically country become much much more dependent on Russia, now it's about 70% of exports go to Russia, about 5–10% to the EU. Belarus has become militarily and politically dependent on Russia, and this dependence is growing, and a lot of people has left the country, some of them for political and some for economic reasons. About 300.000-400.000 people have left Belarus for the European Union. Some go to other countries like Georgia, so the total numbers are bigger. We have 9 million people total, but ages 18–50 are 4.5 million, so almost one in ten of working age have left, so the numbers are huge.

Because of all these actions, the West introduced many sanctions packages. In 2020 sanctions were introduced against particular persons from the police, the KGB, the central action commission. Then came economic sanctions when Belarus diverted a Ryanair flight to arrest journalist Roman Protasevich in 2021, and the biggest sanctions were introduced in 2022 after the co-aggression in the war. So now there are broad economic sanctions against particular spheres of the economy, and Lukashenka is of course trying to adapt the economy to this. What is interesting in this case is that we are seeing the export of corruption, because in this way of adapting the economy, they started using third countries – definitely Russia, but also Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, some European countries like Poland and Lithuania, opening up shell companies and trading through these without any problems.

I will show a few examples. Investigative journalists who analyze these numbers see a lot of red flags, a lot of issues which attract attention when zou analyze trade statistics between Belarus and other contries. So with timber as an example, we have a lot of forest and historically export a lot of timber and products like furniture. Before 2020 half of these exports went to the EU which was the biggest market. Now after sanctions they use countries like Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Basically they open legal entities in these countries, sell the timber to them, and from there have contracts with European countries. In reality this timber is still in Belarus and never goes to Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan, they just change the labels saying it is produced there.

Some of the cases are just crazy. For example you may know producers like IKEA. They have several subcontractors in timber production in Belarus. Some of these subcontractors use workforce from penal colonies, including political prisoners working for free. Another case is carbamide, a fertilizer used in agriculture for more effective production. We had very big enterprises related to fertilizers with the main export market being the European Union, but now it’s Uzbekistan. So Belarus sells carbamide to Uzbek legal entities and sell to the European Union. So it’s a very simple tool kit – use intermediary shell companies, use any type of obscure connections, sometimes the same entities in the European Union to sell buy and sell different things. So using third countries is quite easy.

In iron production we have a big plant with 10.000 workers. Initially there were sanctions against all iron and metallurgical products in 2022. Then the EU introduced new sanctions against this particular plant in 2023 and in the first half of 2023 they had the biggest exports in their history. They are saying this publicly, so everything is going quite smoothly, and in these particular cases they even have contracts with Polish and Lithuanian companies, selling directly.

In agriculture, after the start of the war, the EU wouldn’t sell machinery like tractors to Russia and Belarus. So Belarus opened a legal entity in Germany, owned by Belarusians closely linked with Lukashenka, and bought these products from there and imported to Belarus without problems. And if you own less than 51% of a company in Germany you are not regarded the owner, so someone with personal sanctions against him owns 30% of the stock, his friends owns the rest, and he buys and sells, and everything works fine.

So this sanctions policy is not very effective, the European Union can’t monitor all these trade agreements, the European system is not prepared for these cases. In these cases it’s Belarus, but the same toolkit works for Russia. They use the same approaches, it could easily be avoided, and the economic impact is basically zero. This year Belarus has had a growth of about 3%, next year there will also be growth, so there is no impact on the circles of Lukashenka or business related to him at all.

So what can we do? We cannot change opinion, at least me with a Belarusian passport living in Warsaw. But it’s very important to support independent journalism and investigators. I can tell you all these stories only because we have many journalists working on this, looking at the numbers. It’s also very important working with investigative journalists in other countries like Lithuania, Poland or Germany, so doing joint research is super important to highlight all of these cases.

Question: You seem to indirectly to be making the case against any economic sanctions, in the way that at the end of the day it's not working very well. So we need investigative journalism, but what else can we do

Anton Radniankou: Thank you for your very difficult question. To be honest there is no good answer to this question. If you have resources it’s always easier to avoid problems generally in life, it’s not only about countries and sanctions. Lukashenka has much more resources compared to regular businesses or people. For example, it's super difficult to get a Visa if you are Belarusian, it's almost impossible. But if you’re the Lukashenka regime or if you have relations with them, they have connections and Hungarian Embassy for example provide them Visas without any problems, but not for general Belarusians. So unfortunately because of this isolation, broad belarussian society is under pressure, at the same time they are against Lukashenka.

And Lukashenka’s elites are good with this, and the issue with sanctions is that it’s like a race where one side is aways running, while the other side only does something from time to time. So the European Union introduces one sanctions package every one or 1.5 years. And your competitor like the Lukashenka regime or the Russian Kremlin regime are doing something every day to avoid the sanction, because it’s their survival on the plate. And if you’re a western country, you have al ot of stuff to do in this world, not only monitor all of this. So that’s why sanctions just don’t work – one side is ready to run each day, and the other isn’t.

So what can we do realistically? To be honest, western countries aren’t very involved the belarussian situation, they think about Belarus once or twice per year maybe, and do something. There is no case in the world where sanctinos changed a political regime, it’s just impossible. So if you introduce sanctions and expect Lukashenka will disappear, it’s impossible. If we introduce sanctions and expect Lukashenka to come and say he’s ready to resign, why should he do so? There is no logic to this. But if you think about using sanctions as leverage, telling Lukashenka to release people, we should be proactive. In this case, at the end of 2021 when the first broad economic sanctions were introduced, the Lukashenka regime were afraid of sanctions because they didn’t know the outcome of the sanctions, so they were ready to talk. Now they understand it’s nothing to be worried about, and they are not even ready to talk about lifting of sanctions, because they just don’t care.

But if you talk about resolution of the situation, the western countries which impose the sanctions should think about what they could do to change the behaviour of Lukashenka, and it’s definitely not regime change, that’s just impossible. And Lukashenka is very opportunistic. He is not very strategic, he’s not thinking about the future in 20, 50 years or even 5 or 2 years. He is looking at what he’s got right now on the table. And right now he has Russia, which is buying everything he’s selling. Quite a good proposal. What does he have from Europe? Nothing. So as an opportunist he’s taking what he can get. But at the same time he’s getting old, and and after 2020 they started to change the system. So it’s obvious that the next five years will see a transition of power somehow. They expect to transition the power to the Lukashenka elites, but still it will be a weaker system. And in this moment of transition, they will look at what Russia and the West will propose. If the West will be able to do something meaningful, they will have a chance. If not, the Kremlin will win as they always do in these situations.

Question: About the East-West polarization that's happening and maybe specifically about like the Belarus election. Very powerful entities that are democracies on the surface are very much involved in exploiting the weaknesses of small countries in order to let's say sell them weapons or create destabilization. In the Belarus election in 2020, were there independent media outlets who would report on what Western money might be coming in to support opposition candidates. Not that I’m a fan of Lukashenkos regime, but if you have western money coming into elections in a place like Belarus, and there are Western or NATO interests in destabilizing the government and creating a potential war zone, was there journalism that would report on this?

Anton Radniankou: First of all, about West-East polarization and confrontation, we should remember that the former german chancellor Gerhard Schröder worked for Nord Stream for many years, getting money from Kremlin, so it’s always a tricky question.

About journalists, first of all I think you slightly overestimate NATO and European countries being willing to destabilize Belarus. They don't know much about Belarus, and to be honest they don't care so much. But if you want me to develop this idea, in 2020 the campaign was completely volounteer based without any external financing, and it’s very easy to understand why, because otherwise it’s impossible. The KGB controls everything. If any of the candidates would have any money from Western organisations, they would be arrested the same minute, and there would be propaganda across all state TV channels to show it. By the way, they arrested one of the candidates, Sergei Tikhanovsky, and said that they found 1 million euro under his chair, claiming it came from Russia. They showed this before the election before the election so Lukashenka could pretend that Russia, not the West, would like to overthrow him or replace him. One month before the election he also arrested 30 Wagner Group soldiers. Now the Wagner Group is quite famous, but it wasn’t back then. He arrested then in Belarus when they were somehow flying to Africa via Minsk airport, and said that this was Putin trying to organize a coup in Belarus. Only after Putin called Lukashenka a few days before elections he released these 30 Wagner mercenaries back to Russia. So it’s impossible for the West to finance any type of opposition in any meaningful way, because it will be discovered the next minute, everyone will be arrested, and so on.

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