Original name:
Minsk, Belarus
According to the media, this Korean-born entrepreneur had an original surname of Kim, which he changed.
Gennady Kireikov completed his studies at the Belarusian State Polytechnic Institute and became an entrepreneur in the 90s.
In 1995, Kireikov and his brother founded the firm RAPA. Under their leadership many projects were created, including the children’s park Dino, shopping centers Galereya, Geencenter in Vitebsk, Skala and Green city in Minsk, as well as Absolut in Bobruisk.
In 2012, the first store of the Green chain appeared in Soligorsk, which specialized in the sale of organic products. The next year another store of this chain was opened in Minsk in the shopping center “Skala”, investments in which amounted to more than 40 million dollars.
Today this retail chain employs from 3500 to 5000 employees. Green successfully integrated the ProStore chain’s retail space previously owned by Yuri Chizh.
In 2014, Gennady predicted the growing popularity of large shopping centers and decreasing sales in small stores, pointing to the Belarusian retail following the Polish and American standards.
RAPA Group, led by Kireikov, has also attracted such well-known clothing brands as Reserved and New Yorker to Belarus.
In 2019, RAPA acquired the territory of the former Chervensky market in Minsk with plans to develop it. In 2020, it became known that Kireikov’s business structures acquired the historic estate “Belaya Dacha” in Kurasovshchina, where they planned to establish a cultural center.
In February 2021, the media reported that Gennady was detained after inspections of his company by officers of the Department of Financial Investigations. In June of the same year he was released. One of the versions of Kireikov’s detention is called the political position of individual managers of the Green network, who actively supported mass protests in Belarus in 2020.