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bne September 2020 Companies & Markets I 21
bne:Tech
300 Belarus IT CEOs threaten to move their business out of the country unless violence ends, new elections are held
Ben Aris in Berlin
Some 300 CEOs of Belarus’ leading IT companies and their investors have signed a letter demanding a new election, an end to police violence and the release of political prisoners, otherwise they will take their businesses out of the country, it was reported on August 12.
Despite its image as a Soviet throwback, one of the few real successes of the Lukashenko regime has been to create a multi- billion-dollar IT industry that services the leading blue chip companies around the world. But now the leading IT firms are threatening to leave.
“Conditions are being formed in the country in which a tech business cannot function. Start-ups are not born in an atmosphere of fear and violence. Start-ups are born in an atmosphere of freedom and openness,” the letter said.
“In the near future, we will begin to observe a massive outflow of specialists abroad, the opening of offices in neighbouring countries, a slowdown in the growth of the IT sector, a decrease in investment in Belarusian IT companies, and a decrease in tax revenues. There is a risk that in a short time
all the achievements in the field of high technologies will be cancelled out,” it continued.
The IT bosses went on to make four demands:
• Stop violence against civilians and remove the atmosphere of fear from the streets.
• Release all political prisoners and detainees.
• Conduct new transparent elections for the President of the
Republic of Belarus.
• Provide citizens of the Republic of Belarus with free access
to information.
• Altogether more than 700 tech CEOs and IT industry
employees put their names to the letter.
HTP
The business has grown out of the high technology park (HTP) in Minsk that was established in part by presidential candidate Valery Tsepkalo, who served as Belarus’ ambassador to the
US before becoming a technology advisor to Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko. After he left public office, Tsepkalo carried on advising governments on IT issues before entering the presidential race.
The HTP came about after Tsepkalo visited Silicon Valley whilst ambassador and returned to Minsk determined to create something similar at home. He tied up with the founders of EPAM, a leading Belarusian software engineering firm, that was already making millions of dollars a year from software exports both east and west. EPAM needed staff and was keen to build a park to train new engineers and create an ecosystem for start-ups and other projects.
Since then, EPAM has listed on the NYSE and has built up a billion-dollar business that is run out of New York, but the larger part of its engineering staff remains in Minsk.
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