Investigative Journalist: Chyzh Did Not Care To Share, Now They Try To Pin Him Down

How a businessman close to Lukashenka turned into a has-been.

The trial of Yury Chyzh began. Investigative journalist Ales Yarashevich recalled how the criminal cases against the businessman developed.

“Chyzh is already a has-been, in fact,” the journalist said on the air of the “Ordinary Morning” show. “Once he really was a businessman very close to Lukashenka, but he lost confidence somewhere in 2016, when he was detained for the first time. Since then, there has been an endless series of arrests and criminal cases.”

Yesterday, a trial began in Minsk, which was immediately closed. The Prosecutor General said that the case file contains documents classified as “for official use”. Perhaps there are some decisions by Lukashenka or the government regarding Chyzh's companies, and the authorities do not want to expose them.

The judge granted the request of the Prosecutor General, and Chyzh, in fact, did not object. Therefore, we now do not know what is happening in this court, except that he is accused of fraud and legalization of assets acquired in a criminal way, that is, in fact, money laundering.

Yarashevich recalls that Chyzh left the pre-trial detention center in September last year, having spent a year and a half there. Prior to that, he was detained in 2016, then he spent six months in a pre-trial detention center.

And he got into trouble again. More, of course, is known about his first detention in 2016. Then this case was actively commented on by the KGB. They even told the story of how they tried to detain Yury Chyzh, and he was rushing to the European border in his car at a speed of 220 km/h, but with the help of an interception plan, they managed to detain him.

Then there were the details of the criminal case, they said that Chyzh evaded paying taxes on an especially large scale. In Russia, a company was created that had one employee, who is also the CEO. This company received the right to use the Triple trademark. The Belarusian Triple annually deducted large sums of money to this Russian company for the use of this trademark. That is, in fact, he was withdrawing money from Belarus.

This information, apparently, reached Lukashenka, and he gave the green light to the detention of Chyzh. He even commented on this case: they say, how could it be, the person who was with me at informal events was doing this. Then the condition for the release of Yury Chyzh was to pay the calculated damages of more than ten million dollars, and file a petition for pardon. When he wrote the petition, he was released.

Yarashevich noted that people who were aware of the criminal case said that Chyzh did not pay the full amount of damages.

— They made a payment schedule for him, he slowly paid off, but not completely. Apparently, this angered the Belarusian authorities and then he was detained again, already in 2021. And then he had already spent a year and a half in the pre-trial detention center, also writing a petition for pardon and paying damages. During this time, his business empire, which he built with the support of Lukashenka, began to simply crumble. It has not yet completely collapsed, but it has already lost its influence, grandeur, and power.

The journalist also notes that we can only guess what is really happening with the criminal case against Yury Chyzh.

— Of course, there was information more than once that in the fattest years, when Chyzh had access to the oil tap, he earned a lot of money and took about a billion dollars abroad and, in fact, did not share this money. Therefore, they are trying to pin him down, to somehow find this money, — concludes Ales Yarashevich.