How Much Money Has Lukashenka Stolen From Belarusians?

The bill runs into billions of dollars.

During Lukashenka’s time in power, many media outlets, experts and other sources provided very different information about the dictator’s probable assets. Zerkalo gives assessments of the dictator’s possible fortune.

In June 2006, the American Ambassador to Belarus George Krol sent a dispatch to Washington with a list of the 50 richest people in Belarus. This document was among 1,014 diplomatic cables from the secret archives of the US State Department and the Pentagon, which, as a result of a leak, came into the possession of Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks project. In 2010, WikiLeaks made this dispatch public.

According to it, Lukashenka already topped the list of the richest Belarusians in 2006: American diplomats estimated his fortune at nine billion dollars.

In August 2011, the Russian television channel NTV published the third part of the investigative documentary film “The Godbatka”. It estimated Lukashenka's fortune at between eight and 12 billion dollars.

In a 2014 investigation published on the website of the French television channel France 24, an international team of journalists from five countries estimated the amount of money misappropriated over 20 years by Lukashenka and his inner circle at ten billion dollars.

In July 2020, Russian political scientist Andrei Suzdaltsev estimated the fortune of the Lukashenka family at between 12 and 16 billion dollars. As Suzdaltsev claimed then, until 2012, Lukashenka’s money was kept in Syria, where the friendly dictatorial regime of Bashar al-Assad ruled. But after the start of the civil war in this country, Lukashenka’s money was withdrawn from there. The other part of the money was allegedly in Cyprus — as Suzdaltsev believed, it also had to be withdrawn after the start of checks by local authorities. The political scientist suggested that Lukashenka’s “stash” also exists in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.