Volha Zakharava: US may reimpose sanctions on Peftiev

It's possible that Lukashenka's “personal banker” Peftiev will control Beltechexport company through an offshore firm in the Bahamas.

Volha Zakharava, a representative of the Working Group on Foreign Investment of the Committee on International Control over the Human Rights Situation in Belarus, spoke to charter97.org about a possible returning of formal control over Beltechexport to oligarch Peftiev.

“The version of charter97.org is absolutely possible. I would suppose that he is the most likely person to control this company. However, he will hardly make such a stupid thing as returning control in a fast and open way. I tend to believe that he will do it through an offshore company. If we turn attention to the type of ownership of Akvadiv distillery, we can see that it is a Belarusian-Bahamian company,” the human rights activist says.

She adds that she wouldn't be surprised to hear that a Bahamian firm has bought a 83.8% stake in Beltechexport.

“I think we will learn sooner or later who is a beneficiary. Earlier, the company had formally been sold to a Russian citizen, but relations with Russia are getting worse, so Belarus naturally wants to regain full control over Beltechexport so that Russian citizens couldn't have any relation to the company. It is possible that it was not Vladimir Peftiev himself who returned control over the company, but someone from his team. It is possible that it was he personally, but he acted through an offshore company,” Volha Zakharava thinks.

She says the US can reimpose restrictive measures on the pro-Lukashenka oligarch.

“But we need to prove again that Beltechexport belongs to Peftiev. They apparently were gaining time, but we can only guess why they need time. Maybe they want to sell the company to someone else later. I think they wanted to formaly take the company from the Russian citizen to sell it to someone they can influence more,” Volha Zakharava said.

Vladimir Peftiev, an oligarch close to the Belarusian dictator, has regained control over the arms exporting company Beltechexport. This conclusion can be made from the data of the Belarusian Foreign Currency Exchange, where a sale of a 83.8% stake in Beltechexport was registered today.