Strange activity noticed in the Telegram account of missing Anatol Kotau

On the evening of June 13, Kotau's Polish number in Telegram lit up as active, and then disappeared a few minutes later.

"A Polish number appeared, somewhere around 23:20 London time. And three minutes later it disappeared. I had just seen it, I was sitting there writing business letters. I look, it's his number, everything matches. And the history was cleared. We had a correspondence history with him, it stopped in 2023," Liavonchyk told Reform.news.

According to Liavonchyk, he decided not to text the number yet, but to observe, but three minutes later the number was deleted.

"In my understanding, this is not a transfer of the number to another person, because Kotau had two-factor authentication, I am 100% sure. Just anyone would not have been able to access Telegram if they didn't have access to two-factor authentication. Secondly, even if the number expired, it was transferred to someone, and they somehow managed to bypass this two-factor authentication... I don't know how Telegram is registered now to a number that was taken from its former owner," Liavonchyk said.

The number's activity seemed suspicious to Liavonchyk: "If it's Kotau, there was two-factor authentication. If it's not Kotau, then why did it immediately disappear?"

Anatol Kotau disappeared in August 2025. It is known that he took time off from work at the event agency Terra Group and departed for Istanbul on August 21, then disappeared. According to the Turkish prosecutor's office, Kotau's passport was scanned at 18:35:54 upon exiting Turkey on August 21 via the port of Trabzon.

Anatol Kotau is a representative of the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation (BSSF). He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). He worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus, the Administration of the President of the Republic of Belarus, the Embassy of Belarus in Poland, the National Olympic Committee, the Directorate of the European Games — 2019, and the Property Management Directorate of Lukashenka.

In August 2020, he resigned in protest from the position of deputy head of the state bodies financing department of the main financial directorate of Lukashenka's Property Management Directorate. In recent years, he has been in forced emigration.

In 2024, Kotau was заочно sentenced in Belarus to 12 years in prison on charges of conspiracy to seize power, leadership of an extremist formation, and facilitating extremist activities.

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