Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating eight individuals and five entities identifying one aircraft as blocked property on the three-year anniversary of the Belarusian authorities’ falsification of the August 2020 presidential election and their callous crackdown on the Belarusian protest movement demanding fundamental freedoms, Ednews reports citing the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
This action targets several entities involved in the Belarusian regime’s continued civil society repression, complicity in the Russian Federation’s unjustified war in Ukraine, and enrichment of repressive Belarusian regime leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka. This action is taken alongside other recent actions of our partners and Allies, further highlighting the unified view that Belarus’s prolonged subjugation of its people and its continued support of Russia’s war against Ukraine remain a global concern.
The individuals and entities OFAC is targeting today include three state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the director and a subsidiary of one of the SOEs, one Government of Belarus (GoB) agency and four of its employees, three individuals facilitating sanctions evasion in support of Lukashenka’s regime, and one aircraft identified as blocked property.
“Today’s actions disrupt the state-owned enterprises and key government officials the authoritarian Lukashenka regime relies on to generate substantial revenue to support its fiercely undemocratic and repressive policies,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, Brian Nelson. “In line with our partners and Allies, we will continue to ensure that the regime pays a price for its abysmal treatment of its own citizens and that our measures in response to Russia’s aggression cannot be circumvented through Belarus.”
Concurrently, the Department of State is taking action to impose visa restrictions on 101 regime officials and their affiliates under Presidential Proclamation 8015 for their involvement in undermining or suppressing democratic institutions in Belarus. This includes several judges responsible for issuing unjust and excessive politically motivated sentences against Belarusians for exercising their fundamental freedoms, including through posting their grievances about the regime on social media.
