The Ministry of Taxes and Duties is preparing a lawsuit to liquidate the largest association of insurance companies, the All-Russian Union of Insurers (VSU). The union missed the deadline to apply for permission to use the word "Russia" in its name, and now a government commission has asked the Ministry of Taxes and Duties to take action.

The decision to use the word "Russia" and its derivatives in the name is issued by a special government commission. Only those organizations that have an all-Russian "scale and scope of activity" can receive the name. For using the word, public organizations pay 100 minimum wages (10,000 rubles) per year to the budget.

The All-Russian Union of Insurers was created in 1994. It currently has about 200 members, mainly from large and medium-sized insurance companies.

According to the Insurance News Agency (ASN), the Ministry of Taxes and Duties (MNS) recently instructed its Moscow office to begin preparing documents to liquidate VSS as a legal entity. The reason is that VSS, whose name contains a derivative of the word "Russia", did not apply for permission to use it. "The MNS ordered the preparation of a claim to liquidate VSS as a legal entity due to the fact that it did not receive permission to use the word "all-Russian", - says a source close to the government commission, familiar with the text of the MNS letter to the commission, told Vedomosti.

The Guild of Russian Advocates was the first to draw attention to the lack of the necessary permit for the Supreme Judicial Council. In the spring of this year, it appealed to the government commission, pointing out the illegality of using the word "all-Russian" in the name of the Supreme Judicial Council. It turned out that the commission had indeed not issued the permit.

Then the commission suggested that the VSS apply for permission by June 16. But the union did not take advantage of this, and the commission, according to ASN, asked the Ministry of Taxes and Duties, which registers all legal entities, to take action. The result was the preparation of a lawsuit to liquidate the VSS. Vedomosti was unable to contact representatives of the lawyers' guild.

Official representatives of the VSS are extremely stingy in their comments. "We have not received any documents from either the Ministry of Taxes or the government commission," says Denis Bryzgalov, head of the VSS public relations department, adding that in 2002 the VSS re-registered without any problems.

However, a source of Vedomosti in the VSS confirmed that last week the union held consultations on this topic with the heads of large companies. The CEO of the insurance company Standard-Reserve, Viktor Yun, considers this issue with the name "a pure formality." In his opinion, the VSS apparatus "simply overlooked the problem." The president of the Moscow Insurance Company, Pavel Loginov, and the CEO of ROSNO, Yevgeny Kurgin, also consider the current situation a simple misunderstanding. "The VSS is not going anywhere," Yun is sure. He doubts that the matter will reach the point of a liquidation lawsuit.

Last year, the Association of Insurers of Russia (ARS), created at the beginning of last year, faced a similar problem. It had to wait for permission to use the word "Russia" for about six months.

But the president of the VSS, deputy Alexander Koval, is still confident that the union does not need permission, because the VSS was registered before the commission was created. At the same time, the union regularly paid for the use of the word, Koval added. The VSS suspects that some unfriendly forces created the problem for the union. "These are the actions of certain unscrupulous officials," Bryzgalov said. "The VSS position is impeccable. It is possible that officials will be dismissed," Koval said. Both preferred not to explain which ones.

The VSS may be liquidated