ZROBIM Architects—one of the most prominent firms in the Belarusian market, with a strong international profile—was in the crosshairs of law enforcement on two consecutive days. On 9 April 2026 the story was a mass raid with on-site detentions; on 10 April investigators appeared to be operating on the logic of picking up those who had not been there the day before.
Timeline (according to independent media)
Morning of 9 April. Officers from the Financial Investigations Department (references in reports mention the Department of Financial Investigations) came to the Minsk office. Around 11:00, various bulletins spoke of dozens of people detained right at their desks—press figures hovered around 50–52. Some reports mentioned blocking or loss of access to an internal server. Among those detained was co-founder Andrei Makouski; the second co-founder, Aliaksei Karableu, was reportedly not living in the country at the time (United States), according to media.
10 April. Security forces were in the office again. Per Belsat and Charter 97, employees were summoned to the premises, and people were detained including those who had not been present during the first raid—the feed included wording along the lines of “detaining everyone who wasn’t here yesterday.” Most of those detained the previous day had been released by then, but the criminal-procedural backdrop and the status of individual figures, including Makouski, remained unclear in open sources—this should be checked against the latest updates from human rights defenders and relatives.
Theory of motive: a post about an “ideologist”
There is little in the way of a single official comment from the authorities in the material reviewed. REFORM.news and other outlets quoted a pro-government Telegram channel: it linked the raid to a post by Makouski on Threads describing a demand from state bodies for a full-time “ideologist” at the company. The channel’s tone was accusatory (“shouldn’t have cracked jokes…”), framing the episode as a political-ideological clash, not merely a “tax inspection.”
Separately, the AP notes a wider context: Belarus has seen more actions against independent professional circles, including use of criminal law and mass search practices.
About the studio
ZROBIM has operated since 2011, delivers projects in Belarus and abroad, and has repeatedly been noted in international competitions (reports have cited, among others, an IIDA Global Excellence Award 2025 for an educational project in Novaya Barovaya).
Bottom line
This was not a one-off “swoop” but a two-day operation involving mass detentions and technical pressure (the server). In the public narrative the cause is explained through the dispute over the manager’s post about an in-house ideologist; the legal qualification and outcome for each person involved remain opaque to readers for now.