Belarusian Investigative Committee Bought Souvenir Watches for $800 Each
The central office of the Investigative Committee of Belarus ordered 20 men's mechanical wristwatches in gift packaging for 48,480 rubles (about 16 thousand dollars), or 2,424 rubles per unit, which is approximately 800 dollars, writes "Svaboda".
This follows from the data of a tender conducted on the public procurement website. Source of funding - state budget. The procurement documents do not specify who these valuable watches are intended for.
Meanwhile, their price is almost equal to the average salary in Belarus for 2025, which, according to the State Statistics Committee, was 2,693 rubles.
The Investigative Committee signed a contract for the production of such watches by special order with the Minsk Watch Plant "Luch" on November 13, and they were supposed to be delivered by December 22, 2025.
The procurement application states that the watches must be men's with a "Luch 2616M" mechanism. In brackets, this model is deciphered as a Swiss SW200-1A mechanism.
Among other requirements are a genuine leather strap, sapphire crystal with anti-glare coating on the front, a mineral glass case back, and a calendar function. A wooden gift box with engraving must be made for the watch.
In a conversation with Svaboda, a former employee of the "Luch" factory confirmed that such a watch description matches the parameters of the factory's premium collection called "Sirius". As the interviewee noted, these are the most expensive watches produced by the enterprise.
“When I worked there, they cost less, I think around $400, but now prices have gone up for everything. This model comes entirely from China, it has a Swiss mechanism, and at "Luch" it's only assembled,” said the interviewee.
Indeed, on the official website of "Luch", you can find several variants of watches from the "Sirius" collection, whose price is exactly around $800.
As a former employee of the "Luch" factory noted, state bodies used to order such watches before, but the "Sirius" collection was usually ordered only for "the highest management".
“If someone previously ordered a batch of regular watches for employees, sometimes as souvenirs, they would also ask for the most expensive ones separately for the management, and the factory offered them this particular collection among others.”
This is not the only case of souvenir purchases by the central office of the Investigative Committee. On the public procurement website, there are several similar tenders, from which it follows that last year, for the needs of this state body, about 168 souvenir wristwatches were purchased with budget funds for approximately 161 thousand rubles, or almost 53 thousand dollars.
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