27-05-2025
Investigators find out how luxury goods banned for import from EU get to Russia
Despite the ban on importing luxury goods worth more than €300 from the European Union to Russia, investigative journalists have found a delivery organiser among Belarusian companies. He is connected to a former assistant to the son of the president of Belarus.
Source: Belarusian Investigative Centre
Details: The company involved in the import of luxury goods is Belcargo.
One of the investigators, claiming to be a client, contacted the company and tried to place an order to send a batch of jackets from Italy to Russia.
In response, they offered a simple scheme: they would buy the items, send them to Lithuania, and then deliver them to Russia via Belarus.
It was about ten luxury jackets with a market value of €6,450, but the investigators indicated a fictitious value of €1,730 in the order. Belcargo ignored this and issued an invoice for US$255 for delivery with customs clearance.
"With such an underpricing, the Belarusian budget loses most of its revenues in the form of duties and taxes," the journalist said.
The Belarus-based company Torgovyi Dom Exporttorg (Trade House) is a key link in this scheme. In one of the Lithuanian export documents, it is listed as the recipient of a consignment of clothing from Italy and as the sender in Russian customs declarations.
Torgovyi Dom Exporttorg is linked to Alexander Zaitsev, a former aide to Viktor Lukashenko (son of Belarusian self-proclaimed President Alexander Lukashenko). The company has repeatedly participated in schemes to circumvent sanctions by supplying microcircuits and sanctioned tyres to Russia.
Despite all this, the company is still not under sanctions from either the European Union or the United States. This allows it to use international logistics and banking services.
Background:
The European Union banned the export of luxury goods worth more than €300 to Russia in the spring of 2022. For example, items from Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga and Brunello Cucinelli, among others.
For the first time, Georgia's largest bank, Bank of Georgia (BoG), has banned its Russian customers from making purchases in luxury stores worldwide for more than €300.
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