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‘Vitya-The-Lead’, Or Real Reason For Detention Of Co-Owner Of AKB Plant Near Brest

‘Vitya-The-Lead’, Or Real Reason For Detention Of Co-Owner Of AKB Plant Near Brest
PHOTО: RFE/RL

Several criminal cases have been initiated against businessman Lemiasheuski.

Two years before the arrest of co-owner of the battery plant near Brest Viktar Lemiasheuski, the law-enforcement agencies already focused their attention on the activities of his plant in Belaaziorsk. Back then, there were no arrests though, Radio Svaboda reports.

On July 2, the country's Prosecutor General’s Office officially announced the detention of Viktar Lemiasheuski, the owner of the battery plant near Brest. The man is also known as “Vitya-the-Lead”.

According to official information, the KGB opened several criminal cases relating to Lemiasheuski at once - for receiving and giving a bribe. At the same time, Lemiasjeuski’s plant in Brest has not officially started working yet.

The journalists tried to figure out the real reason for the arrest of one of the wealthiest businessmen in the country.

According to the same message of the Prosecutor General’s Office, Viktar Lemiasheuski was arrested on July 1. Sviatlana Lemiasheuskaya was detained together with him (according to the information of the journalists, she is neither a wife nor a relative to the businessman), who officially acted as a chief accountant at another battery company - the Belaaziorsk plant BIT-SPLAV.

The BIT-SPLAV plant in Belaaziorsk

Apart from Sviatlana Lemiasheuskaya, the KGB men also arrested former head of the BIT-SPLAV plant Siarhei Akhramchuk, who at the time of the detention was acting as the head of the plant’s technical development department. Deputy director of the BIT-SPLAV plant Ivan Pakislyuk also got under arrest.

Along with businessman Lemiasheuski, the chief accountant and two managers of the plant in Belaaziorsk, two individual entrepreneurs from Biaroza, Dzmitry Rudki and Siarhei Zhukovich, were detained. Unlike the first four, they are charged under other articles. The General Prosecutor's Office reports that the investigation with regard to both entrepreneurs, whish was suspended earlier, has been resumed now. Now Rudki and Zhukovich remain behind bars.

The BIT-SPLAV plant

The plant BIT-SPLAV continues working, despite the arrests of managers. Trucks, loaded with old batteries, drive by its gates, the parking is full of cars, also not cheap ones. Their drivers react nervously to journalists. In the end, a guard in camouflage emerged from behind the fence, who demanded to stop shooting and even tried to detain the journalists, threatening them with the police. After several telephone consultations with the management, the guard disappeared behind the fence.

They started building the BIT-SPLAV company in 2012. At the same time, a story happened in Belaaziorsk, very similar to the situation with the construction of the battery plant near Brest. First, local residents began to protest against the harmful enterprise. As in Brest, they argued that the Belaaziorsk authorities did not properly conduct public hearings.

According to the local residents, the protests in 2012 weren’t massive. The initiative group included about 20 people, they collected signatures against the plant, but they were never sent anywhere. People just did not know how to act. The story did not receive a resonance in the media.

Back then, there were questions to the enterprise also by the Ministry of Natural Resources, the construction stopped for a while. However, in 2014 the plant BIT-SPLAV still was launched and started working. The Belaaziorsk plant differs from the Brest one, as they extract pure lead by melting old batteries, that have worked out their time. What remains is being recycled or buried. The enterprise BIT-SPLAV got messed into its second scandal exactly because of the production waste.

The employees of the BIT-SPLAV plant, on condition of anonymity, say that there are constant inspections at the enterprise. People in epaulets walk in the offices, study accounting documentation, talk to superiors. The rumors are creeping in Belaaziorsk that the BIT-SPLAV can be closed altogether. The attitude to this variant of development of events in the town is ambiguous. On the one hand, the production is harmful, on the other - it gives about a hundred jobs. This is quite a lot for the 12 - thousand town.

The brothers-businessmen

Two entrepreneurs from Biaroza remain key figures in the Lemiasheuski case, 26-year-old Dzmitry Rudki and 38-year-old Siarhei Zhukovich. They are cousins. Zhukovich used to serve in the police. As for Rudki, the agreement with the BIT-SPLAV for the recycling of lead has become nearly the first his serious engagement. Herein, it was Rudki who became the key person in the scheme: he had a permit from the Ministry of Nature for working with the lead waste. All agreements were made through him, the money for the rendered services was transferred to his account. In total, Dzmitry Rudki received about $ 400,000 from Viktar Lemiasheuski’s enterprise for taking away the lead ash and recycled plastic from the BIT-SPLAV.

The criminal cases against Rudki and Zhukovich were brought in the spring of 2017. First, for tax evasion, then for violating safety rules during operations with environmentally harmful substances and wastes. Both then went to Russia. The prosecutor's office and the Brest Regional Committee for Environmental Protection returned the ownership for 8,000 tons of lead ash to Lemiasheuski’s enterprise, through the court. After some time, the criminal cases against them were suspended and both businessmen returned to Biaroza.

“After the initiation of criminal cases, both of them were free,” says Biaroza activist, blogger Aliaksandr Kabanau. “I even met them. They showed me the licenses, everything was fine with Rudki’s papers. Later I found out that allegedly some their relative works almost in the Ministry of Nature. I asked Zhukovich openly, how did it happen that he and his brother received an agreement for almost half a million dollars, even the sums of 470 thousand dollars were sounded there? It's a lot of money! They told me that they themselves had learned about everything. They said, we found out ourselves, we got the license ourselves, we came to the plant ourselves and signed an agreement with the management. At the same time, I know that other entrepreneurs wanted to go there, who have been engaged in recycling and burial of waste for many years. Now they thank God for not getting into this business.”

According to Kabanau, Rudki and Zhukovich took the lead ash away from the BIT-SPLAV without any control. The brothers rented a plot at the industrial base near the village of Zialiony Bor and simply threw the harmful substance into the pit with dump trucks. According to the information of the journalists, Rudki and Zhukovich took about 8,000 tons of harmful substances to Zialiony Bor. These are about 400 MAZ large dump trucks.

How come that young and unknowing entrepreneur Rudki, and former policeman Zhukovich were able to get a contract for half a million dollars? This remains a mystery. It is also unclear whether the leadership of BIT-SPLAV knew what they were doing with their lead ash. Probably, that's exactly what the KGB investigators are doing now.

Zialiony Bor

“Do you wanna go to the base, where the lead was found? It’s is over there,” the saleswoman of the first store, which caught the eye, shows the way. “It is no longer there though, as we have been told. They took everything, drove in the dump trucks through our village the whole summer. They didn’t tell where to. However, eye-witnesses say that it’s true they took away everything. Only yellow sand remained in that place.”

The lead waste was taken away from the landfill in Zialiony Bor by the BIT-SPLAV at its own expense. They say that they spent about 2 million dollars on it. According to the information that shortly after the initiation of criminal cases against the Biaroza entrepreneurs, the media published the information that harmful substances had been taken to the landfill in Zialiony Bor within two years. The amount of damage caused by the entrepreneurs to the state - BYN 60,502. According to the documents that the Biaroza entrepreneurs allegedly showed to the managers of the Belaaziorsk plant, they processed all lead ash and sent them as mineral additives for asphalt production to Russia.

The landfill, where hazardous waste was taken to for two years, is located a few kilometers away from the village of Zialiony Bor. It is surrounded by the forest, there is just one road leading to it. Now there is almost no activity here. On the spot, the journalists met the only guard who idly called the authorities, and then let the journalists through to the territory. In the place where nearly 8 thousand tons of lead ash once lay, now there is a pit with yellow sand at the bottom.

After the 2017 scandal and the initiation of criminal cases against the Biaroza businessmen, none of them went to prison. The cases were suspended, the accusations against the leadership of the BIT-SPLAV and Viktar Lemiasheuski were not brought. On July 2, 2019, the return to the old story became known. According to the official statement of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the check was started “on the instructions of Lukashenka”.

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