Page 24 - bneMag February 2021_20210202

24 I Companies & Markets bne February 2021
Belarus’ IT industry in meltdown
Ben Aris in Berlin
As soon as the street fighting broke out following the disputed August 9 presidential election in Belarus, Max Bogretsov, a pioneer of the country’s IT sector, got on a plane and flew to Minsk.
Alexander Lukashenko was returned to office with a landslide victory according to the official results, but it is widely believed these were massively falsified. The Central Election Commission (CEC) immediately burned the ballots, so no recount is possible and we will never know.
“I arrive a few days later,” Bogretsov told bne IntelliNews in an exclusive interview by phone from the Belarusian capital. “If you had asked me in February if I was going to do anything political this year then I would have laughed at you. But here I am.”
“I got here as soon as I could, a few days after the elections. I am now the man that is keeping [opposition leader jailed ex-banker Viktor] Babariko’s seat warm.”
Listed by the IT industry’s Crunchbase, Bogretsov used to work as senior vice-president of technology solutions at Belarus’ premier software company EPAM before he retired. Today
he is based in the US and remains active in the business as
a manager and an investor.
But everything changed after he touched down in
Minsk. Within a month he was invited to join the newly established Coordinating Council, which is a collection
of leading Belarusian citizens, to represent the people’s will to Lukashenko. Headed by opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya and her running mates in the presidential elections Veronika Tsepkalo and Maria Kolesnikova, the Coordinating Council also includes many other significant figures such as Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich and former culture minister Pavel Latushko. However, almost all of the members of the council have either been driven into exile or are in jail.
Today Bogretsov, together with union leader Sergey Dylevsky, are the only two members of the council still at liberty
in Minsk.
www.bne.eu
Belarusian IT pioneer Max Bogretsov joined the Coordination Council shortly after returning to Minsk after violence broke out in the wake of the presidential elections in August.
Brain drain
In the last two decades Belarus has become a European IT hub with thousands of start-ups founded in the last decade that cater to both the western and eastern markets, incongruously located in what has been dubbed “Europe’s last dictatorship.” IT has become an engine of growth and the infrastructure that has developed around it – especially the high technology park (HTP) in Minsk – has become a platform for new young entrepreneurs to set up their own businesses.
The Belarusian economy has been hit from all sides this year: by the coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic’s impact on retail; by the collapse of oil prices; and by Moscow winding down its energy subsidies, to name the most obvious. But probably the worst damage done to the country is the destruction the faux- president has wrought on the country’s IT sector.
During the protests the authorities have been cutting off the internet as they attempt to stymie the demonstration organisers, which has disrupted the IT business.
But even more damaging is the climate of fear and the
raids on firms where there has been any sign of support
for the opposition. As bne IntelliNews reported in “Innocent lives wrecked by the Lukashenko maelstrom”, the successful media entrepreneur Alexander Vasilevich has already been
in prison for three months for supporting ex-banker and presidential candidate Viktor Babariko. Vasilevich was arrested in August and the accounts of his six businesses frozen. His wife had to flee to Estonia, where she has just given birth to their second daughter. Similar stories are widespread.
In the week following the start of mass protests some 300 IT CEOs and leading professions sent a letter to the government threatening to move their businesses out of Belarus unless the authorities called an end to the violence and agreed to fresh elections.
“Before the elections tens of people wanted to move [abroad] each month and that was normal, but now I think thousands want to go,” says Bogretsov, who is also a supporter of Babariko.
EPAM’s local CEO also signed the letter, but it is not planning to shut up shop as long as there are company employees who