Belarus exports to the European Union an anti-icing agent, which is actually technical salt. The product is produced by the sanctioned enterprise Beloruskaliy.
This is stated in a material from the Belarusian Investigative Center (BRC), Radio Liberty reports.
The technical specifications for Norta anti-icing reagent for roads and sidewalks were approved in September 2022. Journalists say they exposed the scheme using a single document.
Attention was drawn to the product code indicated in the quality certificate that the center received from sources. The Norta marking corresponds to sodium chloride, its content in the product is 98.2%. The same composition has halite, or technical salt, which Minsk previously exported to the EU in significant quantities.
According to the BRC, the product has attracted European buyers. The Belarusian supplier Complex Fertilizers was to supply 66 tons of Norta to the Polish JP Company in March 2024. The registration address of Complex Fertilizers is the city of Rechen near Minsk, Sadova Street, 54. The Rechen enterprise, which is part of the Belaruskaliy-Agro holding, is registered in the same building. Its beneficiary is the state enterprise Belaruskaliy.
Journalists asked chemist Serhiy Bessarab to compare the chemical composition of the Norta product and the halite "Belaruskalia".
"With a probability approaching 100%, this is the same mineral, or rather, the mineralogical raw material. [It] is the same both in terms of the list of possible impurities and in terms of [their] concentration," Bessarab explained.
The "Community of Railway Workers of Belarus"
- The investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Libertyʼs "Schemes" project revealed that the Belarusian company Agroproduct produces rapeseed oil from raw materials exported from temporarily occupied areas of the Kherson region and supplies it to European Union countries.
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