To stay in the shadow

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The Russian business becomes even more open, transparent and efficient. Companies which are considered to be national champions tell about themselves. But there is quite no assurance that they tell the truth. This is symptomatic. When property belongs to some unknown owners, the government can hardly be open and responsible.

In recent years the Russian business has a tendency toward greater transparency and establishment of a proper corporative structure. That means that multitude separated assets are joined to form one pyramidal structure. The financial reporting of members of a financial and industrial group becomes more transparent, and after the group enters the market the reporting becomes quite open. It becomes clear to whom and in which proportions the business belongs.

The first company which postulated its principled transparency was YUKOS. During the Yukos case its PR managers laid stress just on that fact, that the most open and efficient Russian company was persecuted. It didn’t help, but other companies and integrated business groups (the term of a famous Russian economist Yakov Pappe) added the strategy to their arsenal.

Modesty is not a vice

Sometimes one could believe that the modesty is not really a vice and that “bloody 90s” have passed into history. But there is a nuance. On February 12 the Russian weekly Finance put the owner of the Basel on the first place in its informal list of Russian multi-millionaires. His fortune was valued at $21.2 billion. The Basel immediately began denying the information. Oleg Deripaska in his interview to the Guardian said that the amount was greatly exaggerated, and his fortune was twice less. “To be more precise, I know about ten people who are to be above me in this list”, he stated. But he was ashamed to name these people. The modesty of the businessman was surprising. After this interview the same Finance appraised ‘Russian Aluminum’ at 15 billion that was already more than the businessman had said. But Forbes magazine believed to Deripaska and valued his fortune just at 13.5 billion.

Recently it became known that structures belonging to Deripaska could redeem the blocking shareholding of the Norilsk Nickel. Vedomosti daily argues that UC Rusal costs $45 billion. Deripaska’s share was declared while the amalgamation of Russian Aluminum, the SUAL-holding (belongs to Victor Vekselberg) and Glencore trader registered in Swiss and it amounts to 66 percentage. Thus it can be valued at $33 billion.

Well, Rusal is not a public company and it enjoys the right not to announce the information about itself “urbi et orbi” but only to tax agencies. And only one and a half years ago it declared officially that Oleg Deripaska was its principal share-holder.

Their names are unknown, their business is immortal

The most obvious (and too simple) explanation of such a mess is that ‘tycoons don’t want to show up, because if amounts of they fortunes become known, everybody, beginning from the taxation authority till charitable organizations will go to them. And will ask for money. And the political opposition (certainly, if it exists) will hold up to shame so- and-so oligarch who has robbed common people and stolen N billion’. That means by implication that in people’s opinion the property is not legitimate.

There is more subtle and more conspiratological explanation. Namely, the official owners are not only owners of their business. After all, Mikhail Chernoi, an ex-partner of Oleg Deripaska, openly hinted at that when he demanded from Deripaska to repay debts. “I suspect that some third party pressures at him advising not to repay”, Chernoi argued. According to him, this mysterious third party is “hidden Deripaska’s partners”. Some oil trading companies are seemed to be organized in the same way. A trader Gunvor which sells a third of Russian oil officially belongs to two private persons. Informally one says about the first persons of the country.

Maybe it won’t be so important (who, from whom and how much) if we all aren’t dependent on how well these companies and nation-oriented businessmen, the so-called oligarchs, live. If to say about the market of mass-media one can state: Non-transparency of the market of mass-media is a characteristic feature of the Russian political economy on the whole. Election budgets of parties? Welcome! But nobody will believe in it. Ratings of fortunes of principal businessmen? But various valuations differ twice or more; and some people who are far from being poor even don’t get to these lists. And everything works so. Not transparent, but, hopefully, efficient. Only one thing can be added. Where the structure of property is totally non-transparent, one should not expect that the structure of the power will be open and clear. And de facto there is no mechanism of the society and government, society and business feedback.

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