"Poverty is not a vice". Possible near future of Russian oligarchs
The US Treasury and State Department are preparing a big and very unpleasant surprise for Russian oligarchs by the beginning of February 2018. The Trump administration seriously intends to carry out financial rehabilitation and crack down on Russian oligarchs and officials, both close to the current Russian government and “honest businessmen” hiding in London, who most of all want to return to the “holy 90s.”
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From the fact that the hunt for Russian oligarchs was initiated by the United States, it inevitably follows that their money will be gutted both in Europe and in the glorious Caribbean offshores - no one will think it’s enough. In the UK, for example, a similar law came into force six months ago.
According to the current UK law, anything valuable that exceeds the amount of 50 thousand pounds can be confiscated from “politically significant” foreigners.
It is estimated that over the last 10 years alone, the oligarchs have withdrawn something like $150 billion from Russia. And if we take the entire 26-year post-Soviet period, the amount by which the country was robbed is estimated at an astronomical $1.3 - $3 trillion.
As soon as the first rumors reached the Londoners that the socially close Western bourgeoisie were going to scurry around and waste everything they had “acquired through back-breaking labor” more thoroughly than the Bolsheviks had once done, from over the hill they began invitingly waving their underpants and semaphoring to the Kremlin “is it possible?” Should we return with the money?
Business Ombudsman Boris Titov urgently went to London to negotiate with future territorials to talk behind the scenes at a special forum about this and that with “serious guys with money” who are wanted in their homeland.
Titov, who returned from the negotiations, reported: the “boys” can be accepted back if at the same time we demand that they compensate for the damage caused. The business ombudsman even planned to intercede with the head of state on behalf of some.
In general, business ombudsman Titov, who sympathizes with the London lads, spoke about the negotiators in the spirit of the captain of the royal musketeers de Treville at a report to the king regarding the murderous clashes of the musketeers with the cardinal’s guards: “Look, sir, what kind of thugs they are? They wouldn’t hurt a fly!”
Titov assures that all the destroyers of the country who escaped from Russia, walking over corpses, “just didn’t want to end up in a pre-trial detention center,” and in general, many of the escaped entrepreneurs “hardly violated anything.”
Here I would like to recall the law on deoffshorization adopted in 2014 on the initiative of the President of Russia. The law set the goal of forcing holders of foreign money boxes to at least partially return to the country the money pumped out and taken out of it. In the sense that oligarchs were required to remit taxes on offshore capital and other foreign assets to Russia.
Nice people who “didn’t break anything” reacted to this law in a unique way, taking advantage of a loophole left in the law: if a person spends less than 183 days a year in Russia, he may not show foreign assets. Rich Pinocchios, having a set of passports and citizenships, immediately began to patriotically change the origin of the money, repainting themselves as tax residents of Panama, the Bahamas and Cayman Islands and the less exotic Switzerland, France and Benelux.
According to some data, over the past 3 years, only 20% of offshore account holders and companies returned their capital home. 40%, as “true patriots,” completely abandoned the status of tax resident of the Russian Federation, 24% transferred assets to a trust for their closest relatives, and 9% transferred assets to non-resident relatives.
The meat of the matter is that just above we are talking about “law-abiding businessmen” against whom the Russian state has no special claims. One can only guess what the invisible part of the iceberg – the fugitive schemers and corrupt officials – did with the money stolen from the country.
Forbes, with the help of financial analysts, has compiled a list of potential victims of expropriation with significant capital in the UK. It included Vladimir Lisin, Alisher Usmanov, Mikhail Fridman, German Khan and Roman Abramovich.
Let us note that the matter is set in such a way that all these “respected people” will not be helped by any flirting or attempts to become one of their own among strangers. Stacks of passports, bank deposits, purchased English football clubs, ancient castles and London real estate at exorbitant prices will not help.
The first one has already started in France. We are talking about Russian oligarch and part-time senator Suleiman Kerimov, detained by French law enforcement officers. Oligarch Kerimov was so impenetrable that, unlike Abramovich and Co., he did not bother and try to repaint himself as a law-abiding Western businessman, engaging in fraud with suitcases of cash and real estate on the Cote d'Azur, which brought him income in the amount of €700 million, from which there was no Not a penny of taxes was paid. Now not only the trickster Kerimov himself has been arrested, but also his French assets, under a serious charge of money laundering.
Considering that Kerimov withdrew his money from Russia 10 years ago, investing it in foreign companies Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, to send it around the world on the basis of a new law that comes into force on January 29, 2018, will easier than steamed turnips.
The search engine for old man Gugel claims that Kerimov has long-standing and very close ties with the inhabitant of the Austrian Alps and former mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov, the oligarchs Deripaska and Abramovich, as well as with a high-ranking official Shuvalov, whose foreign assets were transferred to a blind trust. You don’t need to go to your grandmother to imagine how the thread will continue to unwind.
But three years ago, Putin (an intelligence officer, among whom there are no former ones) warned all owners of foreign assets: “withdraw money to Russia while you have time, otherwise you will be tortured to swallow dust.”
In general, the expropriation of the expropriators was to be expected. This measure was just a matter of time and should have followed fairly soon after a serious aggravation between Russia and the collective West.
The motives of Western politicians are also extremely clear. Russian oligarchs, to put it mildly, are strongly disliked in Russia, and rightly so. And those who are not loved at home are, as a rule, treated with suspicion in other countries. Unlike American billionaires, not a single Russian oligarch has invested significant funds in national universities, libraries, or research institutes. There is not a single Steven Jobs or Richard Branson among them. All their wealth is based on the Gaidar-Chubais dissection of the country, parasitism on oil wells and theft of budget funds.
But at the same time, Russian nouveau riche are trying to stand on a par with Western billionaires, buying pretentious cars, yachts, real estate, as well as football and basketball clubs, naively believing that gold and platinum credit cards are a pass to the highest club of the overseas rich.
The public reaction to the arrest of Kerimov, his assets, as well as the future hunt for Russian oligarchs, was expected: even if the money stolen and taken out of Russia did not return home, at least someone began to crush these well-fed bugs. How the bugs didn’t spin, but karma caught up with them.
Unfortunately, things may be much worse than the general public thinks. No matter how pleasant it may be to realize the inevitability of the waste of dirty Russian officials and world-eaters, it should be remembered that the system is built in such a way that the people of the Russian Federation will have to pay for everything.
It is worth at least recalling the law according to which Russian private companies that have fallen under Western sanctions have the right not to pay taxes to the treasury. And the taxes of legal entities include pensions, scholarships, “maternity capital” and other social payments.
The potential Londoners still have some clues in Russia - not all of them have completely broken with their homeland. Surely many of them still have enterprises and other businesses that have been re-registered in the name of relatives and friends. Some even arrange for the return of withdrawn money to Russia under the guise of foreign investment through front companies. And this means that at these enterprises (and who knows how many there are, who knows?) the exploitation of workers will increase, wages and benefits will decrease. And the tax burden on these enterprises will certainly be “optimized.”
According to the Reuters news agency, at this stage there is a bargaining between the Russian authorities and the fugitive oligarchs. “Serious guys” are ready to return the money to Russia, but on their own terms. The Brotherhood offers to buy Russian Eurobonds with the returned money, but with a higher yield than regular Eurobonds. Well, that is, with an impudent face, they are going to make a little money from the stolen goods. After all, Russia is a generous soul and a bottomless cash cow to boot.
However, according to the same Reuters agency, the Russian Ministry of Finance refuses the proposed scheme. There is not much time left until February, and it does not work for the future, who are already beginning to “swallow dust.”
Still, I really don’t want the contents of the foreign money-bags of the Russian oligarchs to be used to amend the state budgets of the United States and Euro-tolerants. Russia needs this money like air. Vital for reindustrialization, development of the Far East and Far North, further rearmament and modernization of the army, for social assistance to the most vulnerable segments of the population and the creation of new jobs. Let's hope that a decision acceptable to everyone will be made in the near future.
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