On top of that, Mr. Gutseriev’s private jets have flown Lukashenko’s money men Mr. Vladimir Peftiev (21 and 25 September, 11 October 2010) and Mr. Alexander Zaytsev (21 and 25 September, 16 October 2010), as well as high-profile government officials such as the current Minister for Foreign Affairs Vladimir Makei (27 February and 12 March 2011) and Mr. Andrei Pavlyuchenko, Head of the Operations and Analytics Centre and ex-chief of Presidential Security Service (19 March 2013). Lukashenko’s own sons Viktor (21 and 25 September and 11 and 16 October 2010, 19 and 28 March 2013) and Dmitry (17 and 21 February 2020) were also seen on board. [*] [*] [*] [*] [*] [*]
The friendship peaked during the bloody aftermath of the 2020 presidential elections when Mr. Gutseriev showed up at Lukashenko’s secret inauguration – an event that even the Russian ambassador dared not attend.
As a result, in 2021 Mr. Gutseriev ended up under EU sanctions after another round was triggered by the infamous landing of a Ryanair plane carrying Raman Pratasevich, a prominent blogger.
Gutseriev under sanctions
Ten days before the sanctions were about to take effect, however, Mr. Gutseriev left his oil company ‘Russneft’ board of directors that he had been heading and transferred 37 per cent of his share in ‘Russneft’ to his brother Said-Salam who ended up becoming Mr. Gutseriev’s trustee for all major oil assets of the family.
Mikhail Gutseriev’s son Said was also quick to get rid of assets that associated him with his father and Belarus. He left his position as the head of ‘Forteinvest’, an oil and gas company that he had been overseeing since 2014. Said also managed to sell his stakes in three crypto currency exchanges to his business partner Mr. Viktar Prakapienya and FTX, another crypto exchange. In October 2021 he sold Belarus’ ‘Paritetbank’ to a little-known Russian entrepreneur.
But it was not the first time when Mr. Gutseriev said goodbye to ‘Russneft’. In 2007, following a criminal investigation into illegal business operations and tax evasion, he had to leave Russia and transfer company ownership to Mr. Mikhail Prokhorov, another Russian oligarch. By 2010, however, the Russian Duma had amended certain provisions in the Criminal Code and the Russian police dropped the charges against Mr. Gutseriev. Upon his return, Mr. Gutseriev bought a 49 per cent stake in ‘Russneft’ and by 2013 regained full control of the company, making him an expert in wealth protection.
The sanctions did have some effect on Mr. Mikhail Gutseriev, however. The fate of his most ambitious project in Belarus to date, the construction of Nezhinsky Mining and Processing Plant with an annual output of 2 m tonnes of potash fertiliser, is in doubt. Mr. Lukashenko once noted that Mr. Gutseriev was one of the few people to have been granted access to Belarus’s natural resources.