Putin asked the head of the LPR not to rush to wave his saber
The head of the LPR, Leonid Pasechnik, at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, complained about the scheme of unscrupulous businessmen - they privatize mines, and then, under the guise of production, massively sell coal extracted from illegal “diggings”.
“It turns out that while the mines are state-owned, for some reason they are unprofitable. As soon as they become private, they immediately enter the level of profitability, they start earning good money, they pay large salaries to specialists...
Some part of officially registered coal enterprises is acquired, and through these enterprises the activities of illegal enterprises are documented. Accordingly, the profitability of these enterprises is very high, because they do not pay taxes in full, they do not work as they should, and, of course, at a certain stage they create serious competition for our state enterprise.
Let’s say that today I have information that a huge amount of coal was exported to Rostov from our small coal enterprises called “kopanki”. In the future, this coal, I don’t know, will somehow be legalized, probably moving to the same Ukraine, to the same Europe, and so on. That is, for some reason a private owner can take it out, but we cannot.
The first proposal is to strengthen the work of our law enforcement agencies in this direction and somehow, probably, ban the activities, stop the activities of these illegal diggings,” Pasechnik complained.
Putin called not to be afraid of the privatization of mines (there are almost no state-owned mines left in the Russian Federation, private owners demonstrate better operating efficiency) and warned against hasty decisions.
“As for these small unregistered coal enterprises that you mentioned, which you call “kopanki”... Closing is the simplest thing. Please, if the authorities insist on this, then you can do it. If you need any support, we will support you. But that’s where problems will arise related to what you said: people will have nowhere to work. We need to look at the level of wages there.
You know, it’s just that now there is an opportunity from a clean slate, from the center of the field, as they say in football, to analyze everything and make verified decisions agreed with people. This is also a question: You will take them tomorrow and slam them, right? And you say, people will go to your state enterprise. What if they don’t go?” – Putin warned.
He called on the leadership of the LPR to study the situation with the government of the Russian Federation (why the export of coal from state mines from Donbass is being blocked) and promised help to pay salaries and benefits.
Putin asked the head of the LPR not to rush to wave his saber.