In the economy

Putin was placed by Gref

April 11, 2006 Alexander Ryklin

Generally speaking, it is always terribly offensive when you think that everything belongs to you, and suddenly it turns out that not everything is far away. I can imagine what indescribable rage President Putin came to when I unexpectedly found out that the border of the state entrusted to him was literally dotted with black holes, through which the trade is not controlled by him. And these holes did not arise somewhere there, in the Ussuri taiga or the snowy mountains of the Caucasus, but on peaceful, plain expanses of our vast Russia. Now, most likely, he will force Stepashin to calculate how much money for all these years was not received by the treasury in the form of customs payments for goods imported through “privatized” customs crossings. In a word, in the seventh year of his glorious government, Vladimir Putin found out that the joke about the private kilometer of the state border is not at all an anecdote, but the everyday life of the Russian Customs Service.

Herman Gref, probably, did not immediately understand what it was about when at the next meeting of the government the president suddenly said: “When will we restore order on the border?” This at first glance an innocent issue is built in such a way that the public has the feeling that for many years in a row at every meeting of the government, President Putin has been asking Herman Gref to restore order on the border. And Gref, a kind of screening, all the time forgets to lead him.

I can imagine how many different thoughts and assumptions managed to fly in the head of Herman Oscarovich while he listened to Putin. Probably, this stream looked approximately: “Lord, what is it about? Maybe spies penetrated the country? No, not spies ... Then he would have run into Patrushev ... Ah, so he’s about private terminals and transitions ... Fu, you ... And what do you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, have a matter before? Here the story is not about oil and not about gas - these flows flow under customs. But most importantly, what bastard told the president how the system works? "

The question, by the way, is far from idle. It is unlikely that we can assume that Putin with a pencil and a notebook sat in bushes near some customs point with long spring nights, calculating losses. So, someone reported to him that many years ago the Russian government allowed some commercial structures to actually take entire customs units for maintenance, closing their eyes to what and how customs and holdings are calculated with their owners.

Obviously, Putin managed to get acquainted with the history of the question, since he did not demand to immediately grab and punish the perpetrators - he understands, probably, that it takes time to correct the situation. The head of Mart, the head of Mart, asked the head of state for three years to transfer customs transitions from the balance of private structures to the balance of the state. Putin was not indignant, did not flood his feet, but politely asked Fradkov to speed up the process. Fradkov immediately agreed. Still disagree if the president is outraged and annoyed to an extreme degree. How else to understand the phrase: “When will we stop the practice in which customs authorities and representatives of business structures merge in economic ecstasy?”

Of course, the disgrace that we have in Russia, owners of private customs points use various preferences. But I would like to remind President Putin that this is far from the only example of such egregious alliances. Take, for example, Rosneft (it, however, is state, but there is no difference). So, as a result of the fusion of the company with the Basmann court of the city of Moscow, Rosneft's assets increased by many billions of dollars. Maybe this issue is also worth dealing with Fradkov? Alexander Ryklin

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