The DFR came to Butikavto, the largest car dealership network. The owner has been detained

As Nasha Niva learned, earlier this week, employees of the Department of Financial Investigations of the State Control Committee conducted searches and arrests at the offices of Butik Auto (Butik-Invest LLC) across the country.

According to our information, the management has been detained, including the young business owner, 37-year-old Ivan Liabeyka, who owns 100% of the shares. His Telegram account shows an automatic status "was online this week," which means the person hasn't logged in for several days.

The exact nature of the claims is not yet known, but "tax evasion" is being discussed behind the scenes.

Butikavto is a large and popular car dealership, though young.

Butik-Invest LLC was registered in Ivye in 2023 by local resident Ivan Liabeyka.

Павялічыць

The first car dealership opened in Lida in April 2023, and now the company has 25 facilities in 18 cities.

In June 2026, the network received two diplomas from the Book of Records of Belarus: as the largest network of car dealerships in the country and as a network with one of the fastest sales of used cars.

Павялічыць

The company grew very quickly; in 2025, 287 million rubles passed through its accounts, and the profit for the first half of 2026 alone was 6.6 million rubles. The company employs more than a hundred people.

What's the magic? ButikAvto is not just a car dealership; it is essentially also a financial broker. Such a combination became possible only at a specific point in time when the necessary prerequisites had sufficiently developed.

It is known that Belarus has draconian customs duties on importing used cars from abroad, from which only certain categories of citizens are exempt: disabled people and large families.

They can periodically import cars into the country with benefits. And what's the result? A class of people has emerged who seek out "beneficiaries" and, on their behalf, by proxy, buy cars abroad. The beneficiary receives a premium for this, and their involvement ends there.

For these new resellers, the essence of their work is not in selecting the car itself, but in the art of finding and persuading beneficiaries.

Many people in the country are engaged in this, as such a loophole allows them to earn extra money. As a result, the number of resellers and their initiative changed the very scheme by which car dealerships operate — because it's no longer profitable to finance purchases oneself when an army of resellers has grown in the country on the backs of beneficiaries.

They started doing things differently, solving the problems of resellers who needed to sell imported goods. What are the options?

First: sell the car yourself. But then the buyer must have the money for it right away, and that's not the typical consumer profile here. If a person has money immediately, they'll buy from a showroom.

Then the second option is to sell on credit. But how? And this is where a niche was found for new types of car dealerships that essentially just connect private resellers with clients, and clients with banks, all in one place.

The client — often completely without money — comes to the car dealership and chooses a car that belongs to a private individual but is sold by the dealership.

As a result, everyone profits from the scheme:

— the reseller — leverage allows them to sell the car faster and for more;

— the car dealership — it takes a commission from the reseller for the showroom space and from the bank or leasing company for the client;

— the bank — on interest.

For the buyer, it's an opportunity to purchase a car on credit. Resellers themselves eagerly rush to 'surrender' to car dealerships, as everyone profits.

Павялічыць

In 2025, the network's management decided to reduce the share of resellers in the overall pie of its business and began seeking financing for car purchases independently.

Since September 2025, Butik-Invest has issued eight series of debt tokens on the Finstore and BynEX platforms at 5% to 23% annual interest, totaling approximately 5.2 million rubles and $1.7 million. More than 2000 creditors hold these tokens. They became so popular that the last issuance of 2.25 million rubles at the end of September was snapped up by just four buyers.

In the summer of 2026, the company began listing bonds worth 3 million rubles on the exchange, but the issuance was temporarily halted.

The next payments to investors are interest on November 15 and token redemption based on investor requests from December 1 to 5.

Whether Butik-Invest will be able to pay them — given that its accounts are frozen — is unknown.

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