How Belarusian oligarch tried to avoid sanctions using Catholic Church
The court refused to lift sanctions against Zaitsau / motolko.help / motolko.help
Aliaksandr Zaitsau is one of the most famous Belarusian entrepreneurs, owner of the Bremino Group. According to some estimates, he is one of the ten most successful businessmen in the country. In the past he held government positions. He was an assistant to Prime Minister Sidorski, as well as to Viktar Lukashenka. He is also known as the sponsor of the football club "Dynama-Brest". Because of his support for the Lukashenka regime and Russian aggression against Ukraine, Zaitsau's companies are under EU and US sanctions, and he is personally sanctioned by many countries.
On November 8, it emerged that the European Court of Justice rejected the appeal of Aliaksandr Zaitsau, who tried to cancel the EU sanctions against him.
Rabochy Rukh (RR) journalists found out how Zaitsau tried to get out of the sanctions and what the Catholic Church has to do with it.
Euroradio reports on the content of the investigation.
As RR has learned, Zaitsau tried to bypass the European sanctions in an extremely unconventional way. He came to the conclusion that most European judges adhere to the Catholic faith. And it was through the Church that he sought to overturn the sanctions imposed on him.
The lawsuit to lift the sanctions was accompanied by documents confirming Zaitsau's connection with the Catholic Church.
These included an apostolic blessing from Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, a certificate for the Knight's Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit received from former Hungarian President Janos Ader. In addition, he presented a certificate for the Knight's Order of St. George, which he was awarded last year in Minsk, not without the help of a current Catholic priest.
Priest businessman
As RR journalists found out, in September 2021 a certain Ihar Lashuk, as an acting priest, founded the company ALIS MA LLC.
Due to the sanctions imposed on Zaitsau's company Bremino Group, part of the property was transferred to the priest's company. In particular, according to journalists, in this way they tried to get the airfield "Orsha" in the village of Balbasava out of the sanctions, whose landholder was the sanctioned Bremino Group. According to the documents that the investigators found, Lukashenka's draft decree planned to replace the landholder with the newly established ALIS MA LLC.
