” for at least four companies, two in the notoriously secretive British Virgin Islands (BVI) and two in Panama. Leaked data from Mossack Fonseca, which was shared with reporters by Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, reveals that Ternavsky was “ attorney-in-factĪn attorney-in-fact is a person authorized to act on behalf of another in business transactions. Ternavsky turned to offshore service providers for help. The sanctions meant that Ternavsky and Univest-M could be targeted for asset freezes and other restrictive financial measures. ![]() Protesters in Minsk after the disputed election of August 2020. “Business activities on this scale would not be possible in Belarus without the approval of the Lukashenka regime,” the decision concluded. These close connections gave Ternavsky access to the country’s oil and real estate development sectors, according to the EU’s resolution. Ternavsky was accused of financing Belarus’ problematic Interior Ministry, as well as state television and radio, while his company was named as a partner of Lukashenko’s President’s Sports Club. The decisions described the businessman, who until 2011 had employed Lukashenko’s daughter-in-law, as “close to family members” of the Belarusian dictator, who was increasingly becoming an international pariah for his crackdowns on opposition. Today, Univest-M estimates its own investment portfolio - which includes production of building materials, construction, and hospitality industry investments - at $1 billion.īoth Ternavsky and Univest-M were targets of EU sanctions in March 2012, with additional details added in January 2014. By 2006, his company Univest-M, which started off as the exclusive dealer for Russian state oil company Rosneft, was Belarus’ third largest taxpayer. In the late 1990s, when Belarus got access to cheap Russian oil that it could process and re-export as part of a trade union treaty with its resource-rich neighbor, Ternavsky was quick to see the potential. At least one key Lukashenko insider managed to do just that with some creative paperwork courtesy of two now-defunct company service providers, who lied to investigators on his behalf.Īnatoly Ternavsky's "Cascade" development project in Minsk, Belarus.Īnatoly Ternavsky, a Ukraine-born Russian citizen, worked in the petroleum extraction industry in the Soviet Union. Western democracies have also replicated their response to the infamous election of 2010, imposing sanctions against officials and efforts against those directly responsible for the bloodshed.īut a review of documentation from the defunct Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca and other offshore providers shows how easy it is to evade the financial restrictions. The protesters were met with violence by police, and the strongman muscled himself into control of the country.įast forward a decade and that scene is being repeated. ![]() The international community deemed the election flawed, and Belarusians in Minsk and other cities took to the streets demanding Lukashenko step down. ![]() The fight was far from fair: Lukashenko’s rivals argued that the dictator had abused his power to secure the win. In December 2010, Alexander Lukashenko celebrated his fourth reelection as the president of Belarus.
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