Imperial gold

Over the past twenty years, more than two dozen businesses closely linked to Aleksandr Lukashenko’s family have emerged in Belarus and Russia. Their turnover last year alone exceeded 800 million euros. Their interests range from fish processing and printing to restaurants, radio stations, liquor stores, and dump truck sales. The family business flourished under the irremovable ruler, who began his reign as a tenacious opponent of corruption.

On the eve of his first election as ruler of Belarus in 1994, Aleksandr Lukashenko said:

This pledge to the Belarusian people later became the cornerstone of the election campaign of the former Haradzets State Farm head and ultimately propelled him to the presidency. With loud promises, ostentatious resignations, and public revelations, Lukashenko came to power as a heroic figure, brandishing the sword of retribution against those the Belarusians considered their real oppressors: the corrupt political elite.

Thirty years have passed since then, and the “effective manager” has become precisely the kind of person he so fiercely criticised and attacked at the beginning of his political career – he simply gives parts of the economy to loyal businessmen and members of his own family.

The year 2025 was a fruitful one for Buro – we revealed more about the lives and personal affairs of the Lukashenko clan than ever before. Today, you will find out what this empire is built on and how much the family earns.

Lukashenko’s family. Source: president.gov.by

THE OLDER ONE WAS A SMART KID

Victor Lukashenko, the then-22-year-old eldest son of the leader of Belarus, began his political career in 1998 at the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, where he held the modest position of Third Secretary. However, seven years later, in 2005, Lukashenko Sr. appointed his eldest son as his assistant for national security, effectively entrusting him with supervising the country’s entire security wing. How much did Victor earn in his position? Buro holds data on Victor Lukashenko’s salary at the Security Council from February 2005 until February 2021. Over the past 16 years, the state has paid him a total of €267,500 from the budget, in the form of salaries, before deductions for income tax and contributions to the Social Security Fund.

Changes occurred in the eldest son’s career in 2021: his father removed him from a key government position, and he became president of the National Olympic Committee (NOC).

Victor Lukashenko. Source: sb.by

At first glance, it seems that Victor Lukashenko, as chairman of the NOC, deals solely with sporting issues and pays himself a generous salary by Belarusian standards for doing so. For example, in 2023, his gross salary amounted to 112,343 Belarusian rubles (about 34,600 euros). The total salary for the first nine months of 2024 was approximately 98,000 rubles (28,000 euros). During his time as president of the NOC, Victor Lukashenko paid himself a total salary of almost 378,000 Belarusian rubles (equivalent to 121,500 euros).

However, this is not the only source of income for Lukashenko’s eldest son. Buro discovered that behind the National Olympic Committee’s façade, there are shadowy businesses that have nothing to do with sport. It seems that the NOC itself functions as Victor Lukashenko’s personal “wallet”.

The NOC owns the Lebyazhiy Park company, which is involved in catering, among other activities. The company opened the restaurant Le Château 27 in the heart of the Belarusian capital in the spring of 2025. Guests of the French bistro are treated to exquisite delicacies. The menu is dominated by classic French cuisine, with options including oysters, snails, consommé, bouillabaisse, beef bourguignon and tartare.

In addition to Le Château 27, Lebyazhiy Park has two other catering outlets near the Drazdy elite estate: the controversial Lebyazhiy restaurant and the 50-seat Velmi café. The latter is located within the Olympic Arena sports complex, which the NOC also manages.

It is impossible to determine the profitability of this business – the accounting reports of Lebyazhiy Park, along with those of all companies associated with Lukashenko’s eldest son, are classified as tax secrets.

Nevertheless, thanks to the bid purchasing results, we can identify the lower revenue threshold – that is, how much Lebyazhiy Park earns from renting out the Olympic Arena’s ice rinks and organising meals for sports teams and delegations.

For example, Lebyazhiy Park received state orders worth almost 1.45 million Belarusian rubles (just over 415,000 euros) in 2025. Between 2020 and 2025, the NOC’s subsidiary was awarded tenders totalling nearly 5 million rubles, which is equivalent to just over 1.5 million euros. It is also worth noting that 99% of procurements were carried out using a single-source procurement procedure and were financed from the state budget. In other words, taxpayers’ money is simply transferred into Victor Lukashenko’s coffers. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of financial data available in public databases.

Another NOC business that was not public until recently is Glavtorgpred. The Olympic Committee holds a 49% stake in this firm, alongside Alexander Zaitsev, who is the former sanctioned subordinate of Victor Lukashenko and a former member of the Security Council of Belarus, and holds the remaining 51%. The company has been the registered owner of a duty-free supermarket at the Berastavitsa-Bobrowniki border crossing (the border with Poland) since 2021. In 2025, Glavtorgpred added two Dub Zelenyi alcoholic beverage stores to its assets: one in Pinsk and one in Pruzhany, Zaitsev’s hometown. A local district newspaper announced the launch of a wider chain of alcohol shops across Belarus.

In what ways did the National Olympic Committee’s interests overlap with those of liquor stores and snail-serving restaurants? We called the NOC legal department with this question.

Natallia Hryvo, head of the legal and personnel department, answered the phone. She refused to answer any questions about the activities or financial performance of the Olympic Committee’s subsidiaries when asked over the phone.

HIGH-TONED ASSAULT FORCE

Liliya Lukashenko, Victor’s wife, is also active in strengthening the family business. However, she tends to follow a more social approach.

Liliya Lukashenko. Source: sb.by

Liliya Lukashenko’s business biography is inextricably linked with the Karić clan from Serbia. In Belarus, they are known as the owners of Dana Holdings, a construction group responsible for much of Minsk’s development.

Earlier, investigative journalists discovered that in 2009 Aleksandr Lukashenko had personally signed a decree allocating over 400 hectares of land in the centre of the Belarusian capital – worth approximately one billion dollars – to Serbian businessmen, free of charge. The decree also provided the businessmen with generous tax benefits.

The first rule of a successful transaction is knowing how to give and how to be grateful. And the Karićes did know that.

In 2012, Liliya Lukashenko was employed by the Belarusian company Hefastus Building Company. Two years later, Hefastus reorganised into Dana Astra, a legal entity now widely known in Belarus – and the customer of the Minsk World estate. Liliya worked there until 2018. In 2017, she took over the Art Chaos art salon in Karićes’ Dana Mall.

Thanks to the CyberPartisans, we discovered that Liliya Lukashenko had remained in her position as gallery manager until at least 2023. In 2023, Art Chaos totalled 82,500 Belarusian rubles for her before deductions for income tax and contributions to the Social Security Fund, which equates to an average of 7,000 rubles per month. Over the years, Liliya Lukashenko received more than 400,000 Belarusian rubles, or over 150,000 euros, from Art Chaos for her work in the gallery. Between 2012 and 2018, Dana Astra transferred a further €61,000 to her.

In total, the Karićes paid Liliya Lukashenko more than 200,000 euros in salary alone over 12 years. By Belarusian standards, it’s a fabulous amount of money. Still, compared to the enormous profits the Karićes withdrew from construction contracts in Belarus and transferred to foreign accounts, it’s just crumbs.

Dana Holdings became the general partner of the NOC in 2019. At that time, Aleksandr Lukashenko himself held the post of the NOC president, while his eldest son, Victor, was listed as acting vice-president – effectively his father’s deputy.

That’s how the Karićes received precious hectares of land in Minsk for development, free of charge. In return, they thanked the Lukashenko family: the NOC received “sponsorship”, and Liliya Lukashenko received a place in the gallery and a solid salary.

LUKASHENKO’S FIRST GRANDDAUGHTER

The Karić family is by no means the only one of Lukashenko’s “wallets” that has to support the Belarusian leader’s family members.

Viktoria Lukashenko, the eldest daughter of Victor and Liliya Lukashenko, and the first granddaughter of Lukashenko Sr., completed a pre-graduation internship at the Rukh Sport Management company in 2020. Businessman Alexander Zaitsev, a former Security Council employee, owns this company. Following her graduation, Lukashenko’s granddaughter came under the care of Aliaksei Aleksin and Mikalai Varabei at the Sports Rehabilitation Centre NEO medical clinic. Over the course of a year and a half, she earned a total of 24,500 Belarusian rubles in gross earnings, equivalent to almost 8,500 euros.

In March 2022, Viktoria Lukashenko applied for maternity leave, and in July, she stopped working. After her maternity leave ended, responsibility for employing Lukashenko’s eldest granddaughter shifted to the state. In February 2024, Viktoria entered the diplomatic service, taking up a post as second secretary at the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Not bad for someone who graduated just a couple of years ago.

Viktoria’s husband is Dzmitry Dziatlau, originally from Polatsk. The couple got married in July 2021.

The wedding of Viktoria Lukashenko and Dzmitry Dziatlau. Source: Pul Pervogo Telegram channel

The newlywed spouse’s career soon took off.

“FISH QUEEN” AND CROWN PRINCES

In March 2022, Viktoria Lukashenko went on maternity leave. Immediately afterwards, her husband was employed by the newly established company Morskie Promysly and appointed Deputy Director for General Affairs. This firm belongs to Liudmila Niaronskaya, the “fish queen” and a close friend of the Victor and Liliya Lukashenko family.

Eight months later, Liudmila Neronskaya, a friend of Liliya and Victor, registers another firm, Morskie Sezony, and Dziatlau gets a job there too.

The solid position came with a solid salary. By mid-2023, Dziatlau was earning more than 10,000 Belarusian rubles per month across two Niaronskaya companies. In total, 161,500 Belarusian rubles (before deduction of income tax and contributions to the Social Security Fund) were transferred to the husband of Viktoria Lukashenko for the years 2022 and 2023. This equates to 53,000 euros. What’s more, Niaronskaya paid Dziatlau a salary of over 30,000 euros at her company, Zapadtransekspeditsiya, where he started in 2020 as a pre-graduation intern and then remained.

In total, the fresh professional earned 84,000 euros in four years at Niaronskaya’s companies after graduating from university.

In addition, Dzmitry Dziatlau joined the board of directors of the Russian company Soyuznye Rybnye Promysly, which shares a 50/50 stake in the business with Izumrud, a Russian company linked to Vladimir Putin’s friends, the oligarch Rotenberg brothers.

Dziatlau’s authority portfolio has noticeably expanded this year – he also became the director of Morskaya Manufaktura, Niaronskaya’s newly created asset, which will be engaged in catering. To date, four public catering facilities have been registered with Morskaya Manufaktura: a 60-seat canteen, two Rybnyi Dom Morskie Sezony cafés, and a company deli. The first bistro on Partizanski Avenue in Minsk opened its doors in early December.

But what benefit did Liudmila Niaronskaya herself reap? Shortly after registering the new business, she was inundated with perks from the Belarusian authorities. In November 2024, it was announced that Morskie Sezony had received a soft loan of 240 million Belarusian rubles to build a fish processing plant in Vitsebsk. The enterprise is located in the Vitsebsk Free Economic Zone, which gives it additional tax and customs privileges.

Morskie Sezony opened its second fish and seafood processing plant in Kaliadzichy at the end of November.

Zerkalo recently reported that the bankrupt Belryba company’s production facilities had been sold to Morskaya Gavan, a new company owned by Niaronskaya. The deal is worth $2.9 million.

Liudmila Niaronskaya’s business not only benefits Dzmitry Dziatlau. In June 2025, Victor Lukashenko’s twenty-year-old son, Aliaksandr Lukashenko Jr, received a 20% stake in Niaronskaya’s new firm, Sezon Upakovki. The firm will produce corrugated paper and cardboard, as well as paper and cardboard containers.

НSo, how financially promising are Niaronskaya’s fishing assets?

As of 2024, the combined book value of Morskie Sezony and Morskie Promysly exceeded 120 million Belarusian rubles (approximately 35 million euros). Apparently, Morskie Sezony is only just getting into the swing of things and is still spending more than it earns – the company ended the financial year in the red. Morskie Promysly, in turn, made a profit of almost 3.6 million rubles at the end of 2024, which equates to just over a million euros at the exchange rate.

Things are much better in Niaronskaya’s Russian company. Revenue for Soyuznye Rybnye Promysly totalled 2.6 billion Russian rubles (25 million euros) at the end of 2024. Net profit is almost 2.6 million euros.

Soyuznye Rybnye Promysly has also been offered incentives. The company will not have to pay income tax on its core business for the next five years from its establishment date. For example, in 2024, this figure was only 33,000 euros.

In addition, the Belarusian authorities consistently secured fishing quotas from Russia. This year, the joint ventures were permitted to catch almost 65,000 tonnes of fish in the Baltic, Barents, Bering and Okhotsk Seas. 85% of the allocated quotas were assigned to the Far Eastern region, where Niaronskaya operates. Buro’s sources estimated the value of this quota at $20 million.

Thus, the “fish queen”, Liudmila Niaronskaya, continues to increase her turnover and grow fabulously wealthy day by day. Along with her, Victor Lukashenko’s relatives are also becoming wealthier – this is “crony capitalism” in action.

UNSPORTSMANLIKE CONDUCT

Dzmitry, the second heir to the Lukashenko dynasty, has his own personal “wallet”, which would be more accurately described as a trunk.

Dzmitry Lukashenko. Source: handball.by

He has been the permanent head of the Presidential Sports Club since 2005. Although the club is formally registered as a non-profit organisation, it is actually a vehicle for the family of Dzmitry Lukashenko to deposit their profits.

According to BelPol, the Presidential Sports Club owns several private firms – for example, Pervaya Obraztsovaya Tipografiya, which serves large state enterprises. The management of these enterprises cannot, for obvious reasons, refuse to cooperate with Lukashenko’s printing house. These firms then transfer their profits, under the guise of dividends, to the Presidential Sports Club’s accounts. This club is exempt from taxation by a personal decree of Aleksandr Lukashenko, which is a “fortunate coincidence”. Thus, between 2012 and 2014, Dzmitry Lukashenko’s company underpaid 54 billion Belarusian non-denominated rubles, equivalent to over 4.5 million euros at the exchange rates of that period.

Buro can only estimate the minimum revenue threshold of Pervaya Obraztsovaya Tipografiya based on tender purchases. According to this data, the firm earned nearly 80 million Belarusian rubles (almost 27.1 million euros) from printing services between 2019 and 2025.

Another source of income for Lukashenko’s middle son is the numerous buildings and facilities in Minsk that his firm received from the state at no cost. BelPol discovered that the main tenants of these premises are companies connected to Dzmitry Lukashenko or the Presidential Sports Club. And, of course, the club’s accounts receive funding from “sponsorships” from large commercial enterprises.

The Russian BelAZ Trading House is the second company from which the family of Dzmitry Lukashenko continues to withdraw money.

Back in the noughties, the Belarusian authorities came up with a “business idea” for withdrawing profits from state-owned companies – not to the public purse, but into their own pockets. There is always a special, controlled structure in place between the manufacturer and dealers in this chain, which essentially determines which intermediary the buyer will go to. This trading house in the BelAZ chain precisely performs this function. As of 2019, the Presidential Sports Club’s stake in the Russian company BelAZ Trading House increased to 45%. The Russian firm legally pays part of its profits to the sports club as dividends, since it is a shareholder. Between 2019 and 2024, the Presidential Sports Club received dividends totalling almost 56 million euros from the BelAZ Trading House.

This scheme is being exploited not only by Dzmitry Lukashenko’s family, but also by his friends Ihar Kuluyeu and Alena Lahun. Apparently, the Kuluyeus had known the Lukashenko family long before the BelAZ resale scheme. For instance, in March 2013, they travelled together on a private business jet from Minsk to Istanbul to celebrate Dzmitry Lukashenko’s birthday. The group spent nine days in Turkey.

Whether by chance or design, Kuluyeu and Lahun are co-owners of the most lucrative Belarusian dump truck dealership in Russia – naturally with the backing of the BelAZ Trading House. In 2017, they and their business partners raked in $176 million in net profit from the sale of BelAZ trucks. They paid out about half of this sum as dividends to themselves.

Anna Lukashenko, Dzmitry’s wife, also worked at the BelAZ Trading House in Russia. Between 2018 and 2020, the firm paid her wages totalling almost $100,000.

MUSICAL MONOPOLY

Dzmitry Lukashenko’s wife, Anna, is known to many Belarusians as a poet and songwriter under the creative pseudonym Hanna Sialuk. But Buro has found that she is the author not only of song lyrics but also of an ideal scheme for siphoning millions of budgetary funds from the state treasury and transferring them into the family’s shared “kitty”.

Anna Lukashenko-Sialuk. Source: belta.by

The main brainchild of Anna Lukashenko-Sialuk is the company Muzykalnaya Mediakompaniya. It is registered to the Palace of the Republic under the Lukashenko Property Management Directorate (30%) and to the company ANSL Production (70%), which is formally owned by Andrei Urubleuski, a top manager under Dzmitry Lukashenko.

Today, the enterprise has grown into a full-fledged media holding that simultaneously engages in: turnkey production of musical compositions, management of pop artists, organisation of state events, children’s parties and graduation ceremonies, production of music videos and image-building clips, and the creation of television shows.

All of this activity is heavily monetised. The total revenue of Muzykalnaya Mediakompaniya from 2022 to 2024 amounted to almost 15 million Belarusian rubles, or nearly 4.4 million euros. Net profit over the three incomplete years was almost 2.9 million rubles, or just under 860,000 euros.

It is likely that by the end of this financial year Muzykalnaya Mediakompaniya will become even more profitable. In 2025, Aleksandr Lukashenko’s daughter-in-law has already managed to implement several major projects: a series of concerts in support of her father-in-law during the election – the Unity Marathon; the requiem concert Every Third, timed to Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War; and the sale of the karaoke show Friday Noise to the STV television channel for one million euros.

Anna’s own sister, Tatsiana Kulakova, also works in this production company. She is listed as deputy director there. In 2023, Kulakova received about 79,500 Belarusian rubles from Muzykalnaya Mediakompaniya before personal income tax and contributions to the Social Protection Fund, or 24,500 euros. From month to month, her salary ranged from 4,360 to 9,878 rubles – meaning she earned, on average, 3.5 times more per month than an ordinary Belarusian citizen at that time. She received a net amount of almost 6,000 euros from Muzykalnaya Mediakompaniya for her work over three months in 2022.

Another profitable segment of the media business under Lukashenko-Sialuk’s control is radio broadcasting. It is accumulated in a separate company, Muzykalnaya Chastota.

Muzykalnaya Chastota owns three Belarusian radio stations: Super FM, Dushevnoe Radio, and the recently launched Radio Chanson, which earn money from advertising. In addition to advertising integrations, Muzykalnaya Chastota is also developing a commercial music project – the Dushevny Festival.

In 2023 and 2024, the combined net profit of Muzykalnaya Chastota exceeded 3 million Belarusian rubles, or just under 880,000 euros.

In total, over three incomplete years, the two companies earned more than 1.7 million euros in net profit, of which more than 900,000 euros came from structures directly connected to Lukashenko’s daughter-in-law.

All of this might not be a big deal if not for one thing. The artists produced by Muzykalnaya Mediakompaniya effectively have no real audience. The television channels that commission Lukashenko-Sialuk to produce TV programs exist on state budget funding. The holdings for which the daughter-in-law’s production company films image-building clips are overwhelmingly state-owned.

This entire feast in time of plague exists only because the Belarusian authorities squander taxpayers’ money on concerts for every conceivable occasion and barbecues with riot police. Funds that Belarusians pay in taxes so that the government can build new hospitals and schools, raise salaries and retirement benefits, increase maternity capital, and ensure that families of seriously ill children do not have to collect money via public fundraising campaigns – are instead being spent on Lukashenko’s seventh election campaign and a karaoke show with a budget of one million euros.

THE LUKASHENKO SLUSH FUND

Let us tally up the final balance and calculate the income of the Lukashenko clan. Our investigation has shown that, even by the most conservative estimates, it amounts to tens of millions of euros.

The eldest son, Victor, while serving as a government official in the Security Council, earned just under 270,000 euros over 16 years before personal income tax deduction and Social Protection Fund contributions. He received more than 120,000 “gross” over four incomplete years of work at the National Olympic Committee. Total: nearly 400,000 euros gross earned officially.

His wife, Liliya Lukashenko, has been on the payroll of structures belonging to the Serbian businessmen Karićes for at least 12 years. During this time, officially and only as salary, she received more than 210,000 euros before personal income tax deduction and Social Protection Fund contributions from Lukashenko’s construction “wallets”.

Viktoria Lukashenko, their eldest daughter, received a further €8,500 from Aleksin’s medical clinic as payment for her work. Her husband, Dzmitry Dziatlau, became closely involved with the empire of Liudmila Niaronskaya, who was a friend of his parents-in-law. In just over four years, he has already received approximately €84,000 “gross” from her.

Dzmitry, the middle son of Lukashenko, has done nothing in life other than run the non-profit organisation Presidential Sports Club. Over the course of 19 years, he managed to pay himself a salary of 462,000 euros before income tax and Social Protection Fund contributions were deducted. Moreover, more than 116,000 euros were paid out in the first five years of work alone.

In total, the two Lukashenko brothers and their closest relatives earned about 1.2 million euros in less than 20 years. And this is according to the most minimal estimates – only what we were able to find.

There is also “sponsorship assistance” from grateful businessmen and income from controlled commercial companies. And, of course, the most significant flows of funds are transferred into the family’s chests from the budget – thanks to the complete control over the administrative resource.

Victor Lukashenko’s company Lebiazhiy Park received contracts from budgetary organisations totalling at least 1.5 million euros. Dzmitry Lukashenko’s Presidential Sports Club, thanks to a personal decree from his father, underpaid the budget by at least 4.5 million euros and received another 56 million euros in dividends from BelAZ over the last five years alone. The production centre linked to his wife, Anna, generated nearly 4.5 million euros in revenue over less than four years.