Lukashenka's Fat Cats Shed

How the economic crisis took the shine out of the "rich and powerful."

According to the folk wisdom, friend in need is a friend indeed. The head of Belarus was such kind of a friend for many large Belarusian businesspersons for a long time. Belarusians remember well the shots on which the country's richest people helped the head of state to harvest on his household plot, played hockey with him, rode motorcycles with him. And they received loans on preferential terms, as well as profitable land plots or state-owned enterprises into property, Salidarnasts writes.

Friendship ended with the start of a protracted economic crisis in Belarus.

Since 2014, a wave of jailing of large entrepreneurs began. Yury Chyzh and Uladzimir Yapryntsau, the friends of the ruler of the country, got behind the bars, as well as Andrei Paulouski and Yauhen Baskin, the agrarian barons close to the power, also the manufacturer Aliaksandr Murauyou and the large entrepreneurs of the IT sector Viktar Prakapenia and Vitali Arbusau. In September, another major businessman, Yury Averianau, was prosecuted.

When harsh times came, the big businessmen immediately ceased to be friends for Aliaksandr Lukashenka - they turned into ordinary milch cows. A significant part of people who were on the list of "the richest and most influential people of Belarus" before the crisis, had to experience penal sanctions of law enforcers during the last couple of years. And there is a feeling that a much larger number of businessmen preferred to pay off quietly, and not to get arrested.

There are only two conclusions from this story. Firstly, it is hardly worthwhile for Belarusian entrepreneurs to flirt with the authorities, hoping for eternal and mutual friendship. Secondly, any business within the existing economic and political system, even the most close to the power, can be seized and divided between state power structures.