Belarusian Oligarch Goes On Record For Prison Term In Russia

He could be connected to the Lukashenko family.

Russia has completed the investigation of another "criminal" episode in the activities of ex-Minsk resident Alexei Khotin. The son of the ex-director of Belita and founder of Belkosmex Yuri Khotin will face 20 years in prison, writes the site "Belarusians and the market".

In 2024, this businessman, who for a long time together with his father Yuri Khotin was one of the largest owners of commercial real estate in Russia, was convicted for fraud with the money of depositors of the Yugra Bank. Alexey Khotin and three managers of the bank were accused of issuing knowingly irrecoverable loans worth 23.6 billion Russian rubles to Khotin's oil companies Kapstroy, Vostok and Multanovskoye in 2014-2017. At the same time, the property and sureties provided as collateral for the loans were removed from the collateral. And although the defendants themselves repaid 6 billion Russian rubles during the investigation, and then unknown third parties deposited the missing 17 billion into the accounts of the Deposit Insurance Agency, Alexey Khotin received a real sentence. The court sentenced him to nine years in a general regime penal colony.

According to Kommersant, when Khotin was about to be sentenced, a second criminal case came up.

According to the investigation, Alexei Khotin and his associates stole the assets of Rus-Oil, a company controlled by Alexei Khotin, which had been seized and then turned to the state's revenue following a lawsuit filed by the Prosecutor General's Office. At that time Khotin was already in custody in the Yugra case.

As a result of the scam, about 1.5 million tons of oil were sold to Belarus, Kazakhstan, Poland and Slovakia, and the proceeds were embezzled.

In the investigation, the attackers, acting in the interests of the Rus-Oil group of companies, learned that the Russian Prosecutor General's Office had decided to have its assets turned into state revenue to pay off tax debts of more than 169 billion rubles. Despite the interim measures taken by the court on actions with oil, they managed to "fraudulently" conclude an agreement with Transneft on transportation of oil extracted by one of the controlled enterprises abroad. In 2023, the raw material went partly to Russian refineries, partly to Belarus, as well as Kazakhstan, Poland and Slovakia.

Together, according to the calculations of the investigation, in the interests of the group from November 2022 to mid-January 2024, pipelines shipped 1.527 million tons of oil, which was subsequently sold for 58.642 billion Russian rubles.

The company-owner of the resource did not wait for the money. This amount became the damage claimed in the criminal case. Alexey Khotin was re-arrested within the framework of the criminal case in order to legalize his stay in the capital's pre-trial detention center. Under the articles he is charged with, the businessman faces up to 20 years in prison.

In RosSMI, Alexei Khotin, who is from Belarus, is often referred to as Lukashenko's wallet. Back in September 2017, we wrote in detail about the Khotins and their connection to Lukashenko's "family": "The Khotins are natives of Belarus and started doing business after Alexander Lukashenko came to power in 1994. Their first enterprise was a company producing Belarusian cosmetics and perfumes "Belkosmex". Already in 1997, father and son moved to Moscow, where they rented premises from the meat processing plant "Mikoms" and then bought them for cheap. By 2004. The Khotins already own about 1 million square meters in Moscow. According to some sources, this family business was actively supported by Belarusian officials and law enforcers, who, like the entrepreneurs, moved to Russia. Other sources claim that the patron of the Khotins is Lukashenka himself".

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