Russia and the West may open an economic Pandora’s box
Europe responded to external control with expropriation
President of the Russian Industrial Enterprise and Entrepreneurs Alexander Shokhin demands that the law on foreign administration consider the possibility of returning foreign business to the Russian Federation. Photo site rspp.ru
On Tuesday, the State Duma adopted in the first reading revisions of the foreign policy department of foreign enterprises whose owners announced their withdrawal from the Russian market. So far, in Russia, the authorities of the Russian Federation have detected the achievement of interception of foreign assets management. The initiators of the detention and freezing of the property of the Russian Federation of the country of the Western Union. They are also a dangerous precedent for the nationalization of Gazprom’s subsidiaries in Europe. Western food effects today are moving towards the complete expropriation of those assets that are connected specifically with the Russian Federation. At the same time, hesitant politicians are right that the campaign to seize foreign property will have dire consequences not only for Russians, but also for foreigners. Russia is wary of external management of foreign enterprises. Until now, their owners have found acceptable cases of parting with enterprises on the territory of the Russian Federation. Russian big business demands not to introduce hasty external administrative procedures for foreign business in the Russian Federation.
The collective West came to the conclusion that to freeze the Russian revolution, the activists declared a default on Moscow and drew a line under the reliability of their obligations, said Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of March. But not only foreign currency assets were arrested, but also subsidiaries of Russian enterprises operating abroad. In early April, the German company Gazprom Germania GmbH was effectively nationalized. More precisely, it was transferred to the management of the German Federal Network Agency (BNA). Management with respect to all voting rights on the shares of Gazprom Germania GmbH transferred to the regulator until September 30 this year. The named German enterprise of Gazprom owns other structures – Gazprom Marketing & Trading, Wingas and several other companies in Germany, Great Britain, the embassy, and the Czech Republic. According to Bloomberg, the German government is preparing for the sale of Gazprom Germania GmbH or some of its divisions, where it is going to offer potential buyers loans from the German state bank.
“We are now seeing a line towards the seizure of absolutely legal property. The gangster seizure of property that is taking place – the seizure of funds in bank accounts, private property. We also see gangster actions against our reserves… If now nationalization is included in this, then, of course, this does not bode well, ”said Dmitry Peskov, presidential spokesman, on the eve of the capture of Gazprom’s subsidiary in Germany.
Now there are calls in Europe for a new stage of economic escalation. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Slovakia received confiscated assets that were frozen (EU), reports Reuters. The initiators of the expropriation of an arbitrary and corresponding RF include the seizure of property in a new package of anti-Russian dosages. “Now we must determine the legal ways in which resources can be used as sources of funding,” is the use of a collective letter that was sent on Tuesday to the finance minister.
With this, the American authorities are not yet ready to cross the threshold of a new economic escalation with Russia. Moreover, the expropriation of Russian property is becoming a global phenomenon abroad for all foreigners. The expropriation of the assets of the Russian Central Bank in terms of the rules of the United States and other countries at the moment would be unexpected, but such a possibility is being discussed, announced last week by US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen ahead of the G7 financial sector meeting. “In the US, this is not legally allowed. Other countries also have legal problems with this,” Yellen stated. At the end of April, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland told Congress that his office supported the passage of the bill, which likely allowed for a high estimate of the limits confiscated due to anti-Russian gatherings.
Against the backdrop of strong plans to seize the supervision of the emergence of environmental protection supervision, seen from the exceptional companies of the Russian Federation. And it is dictated, apparently, only by socio-economic and technical goals.
The departure of foreign companies from the Russian market may provoke the appearance of abandoned hazardous production facilities (HPOs), a warning from the head of the legal department of Rostekhnadzor Dmitry Yakovlev. So far, large foreign investors assure that “no one will be abandoned,” but “there is such a risk,” a representative of Rostekhnadzor. “And in this regard, we would ask for an audit of the audit of the external risk management administration, because in this case a security check should be carried out,” Yakovlev said.
The reduction in production activity on an objectively broad scale, for example, due to the impossibility of restoring the demand for foreign raw materials, should not be the basis for external management in companies with “unfriendly” participation, declared by the consideration of the Duma committee on property issues of its head Sergei Gavrilov. The bill, which provides for an external administration, entered the State Duma in mid-April by a group of United Russia deputies. The project assumes that, by a court decision, administrative liability may be exceeded in Russian organizations with foreign investments, which, after 24 2022, “in the absence of this February for obvious economic reasons”, declared the consumption of activities in the Russian Federation, or the transfer of such “unfriendly” assets of foreigners to trust management. A prerequisite is that “unfriendly” foreigners own at least 25% of the Russian organization.
The draft contains a rule that the introduction of external management is possible in the event of a cessation or increase in economic activity, which resulted in a decrease in income for three full months by at least 30% compared to the previous period or the same indicator for the same period of the previous year. But the selection committee of the choice from this decision considers Gavrilov.
Currently, a criminal case has been directly initiated under consideration, in accordance with the requirements for organizations with foreign participation. For example, these are producers of socially significant and marketable goods, including those with regulated prices for goods and services. However, this is not a closed list – an interdepartmental commission created under the Ministry of Economic Development, on a project that has to be constantly checked by the external administration in any other organization.
Earlier, another Duma defense committee also expanded the draft so that it did not provide for the existence of the legal status of the Interdepartmental Commission, the composition and procedure for its formation, the procedure for appealing decisions and the measures of its members for the consequences of such decisions. However, the Duma Committee on Industry announced the need to prepare regulations on the seizure of foreign assets “as part of the preparation of a symmetrical response” to the procedures for the nationalization of Russian assets abroad.
In turn, the Russian Union of Industrial Enterprises and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) believes that the project on external management in companies should take part for the reasons for which it is supposed to stop work in the Russian Federation.