Viktor Lukashenko, son of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, landed in Israel on Monday despite being under Western sanctions, Belarusian opposition news outlet Motolko reported.
The younger Lukashenko departed Minsk on Monday in a plane owned by the Belarusian government, landing briefly in Tbilisi, Georgia, before taking off for Tel Aviv, the report said. Less than a day later, Lukashenko departed Israel, it said.
Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem said they had been unaware of Lukashenko’s presence but would look into it.
Western sanctions against Lukashenko, Belarus
Lukashenko has been under sanctions by the EU and the US, as well as several other European countries and Australia, due to his part in the political repression of Belarusians.
“Israel will not be a route to bypass sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and other Western countries,” Prime Minister Yair Lapid said earlier this year, when he was foreign minister.
The issue of sanctioned Belarusian individuals is not known to have come up in the ensuing months.
Israel does not have laws that allow it to seize people’s property, the way Western countries have said they would do to sanctioned Russian oligarchs’ jets after Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
Some of them, such as Roman Abramovich, attempted to keep their planes in Israel earlier this year. But Israel refused to be used as a haven, even without an official legislative framework, and gave them limited slots of time to park the planes at Ben-Gurion Airport.
In addition, Israeli financial institutions have moved to comply with US sanctions.