Oligarch Gutseriev Hastily Gets Rid of His Business in Belarus

Lukashenka's friend is running back and forth after being hit by sanctions.

Having fallen under Western sanctions, Russian oligarch Mikhail Gutseriev, whom Aliaksandr Lukashenka simply calls "friend Misha," began to get rid of Belarusian assets. Ezhednevnik calculated that he had already managed to sell.

The inclusion in the sanctions lists of the Russian businessman Mikhail Gutseriev in Brussels is explained by the fact that he is an “old ally” of Lukashenka and “benefits from the Belarusian regime and supports it”. The benefit, according to the European authorities, lies in the fact that the Russian oligarch received several tasty projects for implementation out of competition. In the summer, Gutseriev, whose fortune is estimated by Forbes at $ 2.5 billion, began to distance himself from business in Belarus.

Potassium

The most ambitious project of Gutseriev in Belarus is the construction of the Slavkali mining and processing plant. It was the result of an investment agreement between Belarus and the British company GCM Global energy, owned by Gutseriev.

Construction of the mill began in 2015, and the State Bank of China opened a $ 1.4 billion credit line. Several hundred million more dollars were allocated by Russian banks. It is planned to build the Nezhynski GOK by 2023, and then it will become the second enterprise in Belarus for the production of potash fertilizers (now only the state-owned Belaruskali produces them).

Slavkali does not disclose the current shareholder structure. A source close to Gutseriev's Safmar group explained to Vedomosti that, currently, GCM Global Energy owns 41.4% of the company's shares, 33.6% is owned by Sberbank Investments (a subsidiary of Sberbank of the Russian Federation), 25% is controlled by the Russian bank Trust.

Since June 10, Mikhail Gutseriev has lost control over GCM Global energy, according to the company's report. The controlling person is now Sait-Salam Gutseriev, the businessman's younger brother.

The Board of Directors page has disappeared from the Slavkali website. Previously, the Board of Directors was headed by Mikhail Gutseriev, and its members were relatives and managers of the businessman.

Oil

The Russian companies RussNeft and Neftisa, controlled by the businessman, have been supplying oil to Belarus for many years. These companies are the only Russian ones that continued to supply oil to Belarusian refineries during the energy crisis between Belarus and Russia in early 2020, according to the justification for the sanctions against Gutseriev.

In June this year, Mikhail Gutseriev, who served as head of the board of directors of RussNeft, decided to withdraw from it. Gutseriev also left the company's capital. He transferred his stake in RussNeft to Sait-Salam Gutseriev. In July, the company announced that Gutseriev no longer controls RussNeft.

In Belarus, RussNeft had a subsidiary company Slavneftekhim for many years. It represented the interests of RussNeft in the framework of an agreement with the Belneftekhim concern on the supply of oil to Belarus and the distribution of the received oil products to the domestic market and export.

In the summer of 2018, RussNeft sold its Belarusian subsidiary. However, as market participants reported, the buyer was one of the offshore companies of the group, which includes RussNeft.

IT

Gutseriev’s son, Said actively invested in the Belarusian IT sector. In 2017, Mikhail Gutseriev said that his son and Belarusian businessman Viktor Prokopenya had five joint companies in which they invested on a equally, 50-50, including first the first legal crypto exchange in the CIS, Currency.com. In 2021, Prokopenya bought from Said Gutseriev shares in Currency.com, Capital.com. Larnabel's share in Banuba was sold to private investors, meanwhile. After that, Prokopenya and Gutseriev no longer held any joint projects.

After the signing of the well-known decree on HTP 2.0, the Russian businessman was called one of the fathers of the “Belarusian IT revolution,” which convinced Lukashenka to start “building an IT country.” They also say that it was Gutseriev who paid 100 thousand dollars for the development of the draft decree.

In a number of Internet publications Mikhail Gutseriev has been mistakenly named as a partner of Viktor Prokopenya, however, they have never had joint business.

Viktor Prokopenya had some joint projects with Mikhail’s son, Said Gutseriev. After sanctions against Mikhail Gutseriev were imposed, Prokopenya’s lawyers approached journalists with a request to fix inaccuracies in older articles, to reflect factually correct information. This should say that Larnabel, which worked with Prokopenya, was owned by Said Gutseriev, but not by Mikhail or Gutseriev’s family.

Mikhail Gutseriev is also incorrectly named as a Chairman of the Board of Larnabel. However, since Larnabel was founded Mikhail Gutseriev has never been a chairman of Larnabel’s board, neither he has been in company’s management or it’s director.

Those facts are confirmed by publically available statements from the official company’s house register on the web-site www.i-cyprus.com, according to which from the company’s founding to the current moment 100% of shares in the fund Larnabel belonged to Said Gutseriev, not Mikhail or other members of Gutseriev family. According to the official cyprus registry, Mikhail Gutseriev was never a chairman of the board or director of Larnabel Enterprises. This inconsistency was also fixed in one press release on the website of VP Capital.

Recently it became known that Said Gutseriev sold his stakes in three crypto-exchanges - Currency.com, Capital.com, and Zubr.io. The buyer of Zubr.io were the international crypto-exchange FTX (Zubr.io) and Viktor Prokopenya (Currency.com, Capital.com).

Soon after, it became known that Said Gutseriev had also left the post of general director of the ForteInvest oil and gas company.

Paritetbank

Said Gutseriyev still owns Paritetbank in Belarus. He bought this state bank in April 2020. The State Property Committee of Belarus then did not disclose the amount of the transaction but noted that the state aims to reduce its share in the banking sector by selling shares to strategic investors. It is worth saying that Paritetbank was one of two Belarusian banks that were entrusted with conducting operations on currency.com in 2019.

Other projects

The EU magazine says that Gutseriev presented Lukashenka with luxurious gifts, and he thanked Gutseriev for "charity and multi-billion dollar investments in Belarus."

A Russian businessman built a Rennaissance hotel in Minsk specifically for the 2014 Ice Hockey World Championship. He also erected a terminal at the Minsk airport, as well as a business center and a recreation center in Krasnoselski, which previously belonged to the structures of the Office of the President of Belarus. In these projects, Gutseriev, according to him, invested $ 180 million of personal funds.

The businessman also built a church and a private school in Minsk.

However, the key assets of the Gutserievs are located in Russia. In addition to RussNeft and Neftisa, they own M.Video, Kuzbass Fuel Company, Russian Coal, and more than 3.5 million square meters of commercial real estate (the Gutserievs are among the largest Russian rentiers).

The process of getting rid of assets could theoretically help Mikhail Gutseriev bypass the sanctions, but his business empire is too vast and not personalized for one person. In other words, no matter which of the Gutseriev family belongs to this or that asset, Europe will still associate it with “friend Misha.”