The President of the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists, Vidmantas Janulevičius, promised to look into the circumstances revealed by the BIC and its partner media outlets in a joint investigation. Journalists found that the Lithuanian businessman who serves as the organization’s vice president, Sigitas Paulauskas, remained almost the sole beneficiary of the Belarusian furniture factory Novus Industry until September 2026. Despite the suspension of operations in Belarus announced in 2022, this enterprise continued to trade with companies of the VMG Group holding company, which Paulauskas owns.
In a comment to 15min, one of the BIC’s partners in this investigation, Janulevičius stated he learned about Paulauskas’s connections with the Belarusian company only after the publication. He said that the information revealed in the investigation “raises serious questions,” so the Confederation intends to “clarify the facts.” Janulevičius informed that he had spoken with Paulauskas, who assured him that he had sold his shares in the Belarusian business.
“What we are hearing from Mr. Sigitas is a different story, so we would still need to look into the matter ourselves and establish when exactly these exits actually took place, and everything else. For now, we will not take either side in this matter because we simply do not know the actual circumstances,”,” said the head of the Lithuanian Confederation of Industrialists.
In an earlier investigation titled “IKEA left — the furniture stayed: How a Belarusian factory owned by a Lithuanian millionaire supplied Russia with lookalikes of the Swedish brand,” the BIC discovered that Sigitas Paulauskas, one of the 15 richest people in Lithuania in 2024, owned nearly 99% of the Belarusian factory Novus Industry through companies in the Netherlands and Cyprus until September 2026. The company produced furniture for IKEA until 2022. After the Swedish brand withdrew from Belarus, the company continued producing similar products and supplying them to Russia.
Which one is IKEA?
Wardrobe
Result
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You correctly identified every IKEA model and every piece made by a Belarusian manufacturer.
Images: Retailers’ websites
BIC journalists found that the main Russian buyer of Novus Industries supplied furniture to Abkhazia, and the factory’s products were sold with the option of delivery to Russian-occupied Donetsk. Additionally, the investigation revealed that companies in the VMG Group holding, which Paulauskas owns and which remains an IKEA supplier, continued to trade with the Belarusian plant in 2023-2024 despite a previous statement about suspending operations in Belarus.
Paulauskas claims that he transferred the operational management of the Belarusian enterprise to its management team in 2023. Until September 2026, he sold the factory-owning company to an unnamed businessman from the United Arab Emirates.
