That Monday, Dmitri Yégorov, director of the large sugar company in Skidel, in western Belarus , did not show up for work. It wasn't Tuesday either. Neither Víktor Mirónov, responsible for more than two decades of the sugar factory Zhábinka. It was rumored that both had been "summoned to Minsk." They did not step on the factory again. Last Friday, Mikhail Kristanovich and Nikolai Prúdnik, heads of the other two sugar companies in the country decided to take an unexpected vacation. For days, nothing was known about the whereabouts of the directors of the four sugar factories of the former Soviet state. And Belarus began to elucidate about its fate, which was already predicted very little sweet. Prúdnik and Kristanóvich never reached their holiday destination. The Embraer 175 in which they traveled from Minsk to Munich, of the Belarusian flag company Belavia, took a turn when it flew over Poland and landed unexpectedly in Grodno (west of Belarus). There, before the astonished gaze of the passengers, who feared some technical problem or even a terrorist threat, a police team climbed aboard and took two men and their companions. Later it was learned that they were both managers and their families. Eleven days later, President Aleksander Lukashenko revealed what most of the country suspected, that the heads of the four sugar companies had been arrested by the KGB . And they remain in custody of the Belarusian secret service, which still retains the acronym of Soviet times (the only one that has not renamed it) and, according to critics, also some of its practices. They are charged with bribery, embezzlement and fraud with seven other people - including workers and senior officials - in what is already known as the case of sugar . The event has shaken the country. Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for 25 years, recognizable by his characteristic and careful mustache and who is usually called the " last dictator of Europe"He said it was he who ordered the arrests and sent the plane back. The inspections found that the defendants had" dozens of luxury cars, apartments, mansions and a large amount of cash, "said the Belarusian president , to whom public television usually shows on visits and inspections to farms, factories or schools, such as who personally controls the management of the country. "They were not beaten, they did not put their fingers in the door. They were planted and demanded the truth. And they confessed, "Lukashenko said Tuesday, on one of those televised visits, this time to a paper producer. The case, in which those responsible for the entire sugar industry are under the spotlight, is unprecedented in Belarus, says economic analyst Olga Loiko. The most Sovietized of the former countries of the USSR barely registers cases of domestic or small-scale corruption (bites of police officers, officials or doctors), says Loiko. Although they are not infrequent events in the business field. Public or private, says the Belarusian expert. But the case of "the sugar mafia" - as the state media call it after the arrests were made public - also comes at an interesting time for this summer's presidential elections . "The coincidence between the disclosure of the crime and the start of the campaign is probably accidental, but beneficial to the authorities," Loiko notes. Belarus (9.5 million inhabitants), with a semi-market economy - and a GDP per person capita in purchasing power parity of about $ 20,000 per year, according to World Bank data—, is engaged in an intense negotiation with Russia on the price of oil, which is very dependent, which can jeopardize its economic stability. Meanwhile, sugar is in every house, it is a close and understandable topic. Also important for Belarus, which in the 1990s nationalized sugar companies and two years ago, faced with the fall in world product prices, set a minimum for domestic sales: about 63 cents. A regulation that has allowed modernizing and maintaining the industry but affecting the pocket of Belarusians (with a minimum annual salary of about 375 euros). Now, after the sugar case scandal, all that could change. The accused executives took advantage of this regulation, according to the data disclosed by President Lukashenko and the Attorney General's Office. The four chiefs of the Belarusian sugar mills and the director of the state exporting company created a phantom company in Russia and sold at low prices a sugar that was not exported, but sold in Belarus at the regulated price, so that the defendants pocketed the difference. In addition, businessmen marketed the product to Russian intermediaries at lower prices and for each ton they received commission. "Each year, the amount of bribes is estimated at hundreds of thousands of dollars," said KGB spokesman Konstantin Bychek, quoted by the Belarusian independent portal Tut.by, who has followed up on the case. The Belarusian sugar chiefs also had an internal asset: someone advised them of inspections and protected them from indiscreet reviews. Vladimir Tijin, a senior official of the Ministry of Interior, considered one of the popes of the anti-corruption fight in the country - and which has several complaints of opponents for human rights violations - has been arrested as part of the case. It is suspected that it was he, retired in December, who slapped Prúdnik and Kristanóvich to flee. The defendants face up to 15 years in jail. "Here we are trying to build and innovate so that people have a salary and while those bastards are stealing insolently in broad daylight," President Lukashenko said emphatically. And he warned: "That all directors take note."