OFAC Sanctions Belarusian Companies, People for Aiding Government

The Office of Foreign Assets Control this week sanctioned 11 companies and eight people connected to the Alexander Lukashenko-led government in Belarus and what OFAC said is its “brutal suppression” of civil society, corruption and complicity in Russia’s war against Ukraine. The designations target various state-controlled firms and others supporting the Lukashenko regime.

Among those designated is a state-controlled cement plant holding company, a logging and paper business, a logistics firm, defense companies and a microelectronics supplier. Other sanctions target officials with those companies, businesses owned by those officials, the secretary general for the Belarus Red Cross -- which OFAC said has been transferring children from Ukraine to Russia -- and others in Lukashenko’s inner circle.

OFAC also issued new General License No. 10, which authorizes certain wind-down transactions with Tabak Invest LLC, a newly sanctioned Belarusian tobacco company that the agency said has reportedly helped orchestrate an “elaborate cigarette smuggling scheme” into Russia that has generated millions of dollars in revenue for the company. Those transactions are authorized through 12:01 a.m. EST Feb. 2.

Brian Nelson, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said those companies and people help generate revenue for the Lukashenko regime. The Biden administration will continue to sanction Lukashenko’s “revenue generators, his so-called personal ‘wallets,’ and actors who facilitate Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, coordinate the movement of children from Ukraine to Belarus, and support” the Belarusian government, Nelson said.