Iryna Abelskaya’s school changed and classified owners

Buro discovered that the Minsk International Gymnasium, which was previously owned by Nikolai Lukashenko’s mother, Iryna Abelskaya, underwent significant structural changes in March 2025.

Since June 2020, the private school has been operated by the legal entity of the same name, Minskaya Mezhdunarodnaya Gimnaziya. This entity is, in turn, owned by Gorizonty Znaniy.

RECORD EXTRACT FROM THE UNIFIED STATE REGISTER OF LEGAL ENTITIES AND INDIVIDUAL ENTREPRENEURS OF BELARUS – CHUO MINSKAYA MEZHDUNARODNAYA GIMNAZIYA

Iryna Abelskaya registered the company Gorizonty Znaniy in September 2019. She transferred it to the Cypriot offshore company Blatberg Holdings Limited in October 2020. Blatberg Holdings Limited is linked to the Russian oligarch Mikhail Gutseriev. The construction was carried out by SertusAvia, a Belarusian firm and subsidiary of Blatberg Holdings Limited.

On 20 March 2025, the unitary enterprise Gorizonty Znaniy changed its ownership structure to an LLC, and its area of activity from “general secondary education” to “comprehensive building maintenance services”.

ЧFour days later, Blatberg Holdings Limited withdrew from ownership of Gorizonty Znaniy.

Mikhail Gutseriev was likely asked to hand over Gorizonty Znaniy "amicably", following the deterioration of his relationship with Aleksandr Lukashenko.

According to Czech media reports, the Russian billionaire has been secretly negotiating with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Czech intelligence services since 2022. He offered to reveal the secrets of Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin in exchange for the sanctions against him and his assets being lifted, but no deal was agreed.

One month after the secret negotiations between Gutseriev and Western intelligence services were revealed, he told the Russian edition of Forbes that the Belarusian authorities had nationalised his company, Slavkaliy. The company was implementing an investment project in Belarus for the construction of the Nezhin Mining and Processing Plant, in which his Safmar group had invested half a billion dollars. Lukashenko still hasn't returned the money to his "friend Mikhail".

The new owner of the elite school in the Drazdy estate is unknown, as the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs does not provide data on the current beneficiary.

ENG

We submitted a complaint to the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus concerning the withholding of information regarding the new owners of Gorizonty Znaniy from the Unified State Register. Here is what officials told us:

“Registration authorities include information [on the owners of legal entities] in the Unified State Register based on documents provided by the business entity itself. Accordingly, records from the Unified State Register are provided to the extent contained in the Unified State Register. The Ministry of Justice does not have any information that is not included in the Unified State Register”.

RESPONSE OF THE MINISTRY OF JUSTICE OF THE REPUBLIC OF BELARUS TO BURO’S REQUEST

In other words, neither the Ministry of Justice nor the Register authorities know who the new, apparently very influential, owner of Gorizonty Znaniy is.

We have previously recorded a similar occurrence: information about the owners of the fast food chain Mac.by disappeared from the Unified State Register.