Foreign owners usually approach beneficial-ownership disclosure with one of two opposite assumptions, and both are wrong. The first is that Belarus, like the EU and the UK, keeps a public UBO register that will put their name in a searchable database for anyone to see. The second is that beneficial-ownership disclosure is not a real […]
“Free economic zone” sounds like a tax-free playground: set up in the zone, leave taxes behind, job done. Belarus’s six free economic zones — Brest, Gomel-Raton, Minsk, Vitebsk, Mogilev and Grodnoinvest, one in each regional centre — do offer substantial incentives: a profit-tax holiday followed by a reduced rate, exemption from real-estate and land tax, […]
Foreign investors setting up in Belarus tend to reach for one of two things: open a Belarusian company directly, or ask whether they should “build a holding structure,” picturing something elaborate. Both instincts miss the useful middle. The elaborate thing — a registered Belarusian holding, with a management company and a centralised fund — is […]
A foreign owner opening a Belarusian company hears “multi-currency account” and pictures what it means almost anywhere else: hold and freely move euros and dollars alongside the local currency. In 2026 that picture is wrong, and understanding why is essential before you rely on the account. Under the sanctions in place on parts of the […]
A foreign investor who wants Belarusian real estate — an office, a warehouse, a rental building — usually assumes they will simply buy it in their own name. In Belarus that is often not the clean route, for a reason most people do not expect: foreign persons cannot own land here. Under the Code on […]
Many foreign owners assume the hard part ended once the company was set up, and that everything after that — replacing the director, adjusting the charter, bringing in or buying out a shareholder — is an internal decision you simply make and move on. In Belarus, that assumption is the core mistake. Most of these […]
Before signing with a Belarusian company, most people start by pulling an extract from the Unified State Register (USR, known locally by its Russian acronym EGR) and assume the counterparty has been checked. The extract is genuinely useful: in minutes and at minimal cost, it confirms that the company exists and gives its legal form […]
If you run a foreign-owned company in Belarus and want to hire a foreign employee, you probably brace for the full apparatus: annual quotas, an employer permit to “attract foreign labour,” and a work permit for each hire. That is what the old rules describe, and what most of the articles online still tell you. […]
Two people decide to build a business in Belarus together. They pick a name, find an office, prepare the documents, and file. Energy goes into the milestone — the company exists. What almost never gets discussed is the deal between the two of them: who decides what, what happens if one wants out, what if […]
Plenty of foreign companies want a soft landing in Belarus — an office, a local face, a way to start — and the representative office looks like exactly that. It is the low-commitment option, and for the right purpose it is a genuinely good one. But it comes with a hard limit that catches people […]
A foreign company setting up in Belarus usually arrives with the decision half-made: register a subsidiary, an LLC, and get on with it. Sometimes that is exactly right. But there are four ways to establish here — an LLC, a joint-stock company, a branch, or a representative office — and they are not four flavours […]
