Petroleum smuggling

Former KGB-agent reveals illegal oil smuggling from Belarus

The government of Belarus has knowingly enabled smuggling of petroleum products through its country. Documents seen by Swedish Radio’s Ekot news desk show how Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko, the right-hand man of President Alexander Lukashenko, has personally acted to make sure the smuggling could continue.

– This is quite simply corruption at the highest level of the state, which hurts the country’s economy. It’s about the top people in the government protecting those involved, says Andrei Molchan, who has worked for the Belarusian secret service, the KGB, for ten years.

The documents seen by Ekot come from an investigation into smuggling of petroleum products to Western Europe.

It was a simple setup. Belarus was allowed to buy petrol and oil from Russia at a reduced price; but if it wanted to sell the petroleum products on to the EU it had to pay tax to Russia. In order to avoid the taxes one company relabeled the petroleum products and smuggled them out of the country under a false description.