The Guardian reports that Belarus’s leader Alexander Lukashenko has sacked his prime minister and other key members of government following a corruption scandal that saw top officials arrested.
Andrei Kobyakov will be replaced as prime minister by former development bank head Sergei Rumas. Several vice-premiers as well as the ministers for economy and industry have also lost their posts.
Over the summer a corruption scandal rocked the health service of the ex-Soviet nation. Authorities arrested dozens of top health officials, medics and drug company representatives on suspicion of siphoning off millions of dollars in state funding.
Even the head of the security services in the country dubbed “Europe’s last dictatorship” called for an overhaul of the system in the wake of the arrests.
Independent economist and director of the Scientific Research Mises Center, Yaroslav Romanchuk welcomed the government shake-up.
“It is good to replace these people, pillars of the old socialist economy,” he said, adding that the new team were not “bogged down in corruption”.
