Disappearance of Belarusian sugar mill directors linked to fraudulent deliveries to Russia
The disappearance of the directors of all four Belarusian sugar mills could be linked to fraudulent deliveries to Russia, Belarusian Prosecutor General Alexander Konyuk told the TV channel Belarus 4 Grodno in an interview.
This is the first official statement about the so-called “sugar case”. “I don’t want to announce some things now, the entire republic is talking about them at the moment. But what’s happened now is once again external accounts receivable. It’s the fraudulent schemes that are concluded between our company directors and counterparties, primarily Russian,” said Konyuk.
On January 24, the director of the Haradzeya Combine was removed from an aircraft on which he was about to fly to Munich. On January 27, the Director of the Slutsk Sugar Refinery “flew off on holiday”, the company claims. The head of the Skidzyel Sugar Combine “left for Minsk”, and the director of the Zhabinka Sugar Plant simply stopped coming to work.
According to a source of the news outlet Tut.by, the directors could have been arrested as part of a corruption investigation being carried out by the Committee for State Security. According to the newspaper, another suspect in the “sugar case” is the director of the Belarusian Sugar Company, Dmitry Kirillov.
On January 28, it was reported that the directors had indeed been arrested in connection with a corruption case. According to Tut.by’s sources, 11 people have already been arrested, and more arrests are expected.
According to the Belarusian national statistics service, 90% of Belarusian sugar is sold to Russia.