Alexey Kudrin against the Constitution

At the end of April 2004, another Russian Economic Forum was held in London, after which representatives of the Government of the Russian Federation Alexander Zhukov and Alexei Kudrin gave a press conference. The media reported on it, dwelled on some answers, but did not publish the full text. Meanwhile, Alexei Kudrin made a very remarkable statement at it, which caused the unequivocal indignation of experts in Russia (the reaction of the Western public is not reported).

The Russian finance minister said that the "political omnivorousness" of business, in which "on the board of directors of one company, some of the members support the right, and some support the communists ," is unacceptable. Moreover, he actually admitted that big business "perhaps will be forgiven" for illegally acquired capital, however, subject to the adoption of new rules of the game, which provide for the refusal of businesses to use tax benefits and the mandatory participation of entrepreneurs in charitable activities. Moreover, the amnesty will also apply to those who have already been prosecuted (we give an interpretation of the magazine "Expert" and the newspaper "Trud", because, once again, we could not find the text of the press conference - ed. ) .

The reaction to this performance was quite harsh. Mikhail Delyagin, for example, commented on this as follows: “The question arises: what is your business, Comrade Kudrin? But he apparently considered that the state has the right to determine its policy towards corporations, depending on who and in what degree of integrity the leaders of these corporations support. The people were in a slight shock " .

But this statement was most consistently commented on in the editorial of the journal Expert, who believes that with such a public statement, "Comrade Kudrin boldly rejected the decrepit dogmas of the bourgeois Russian Constitution, which guarantees every Russian the freedom of political views, regardless of place of work and position held. With this bold step, the minister finance has shown an example of a breadth of views that is still inaccessible to some employees of the Ministry of Taxes and Duties and the Prosecutor General's Office.These figures in recent months have shown an outrageous penchant for half-hearted solutions, denying only certain principles of jurisprudence, such as the inadmissibility of being held liable for the use of tax incentives, which Aleksey Kudrin showed us an example of a truly broad approach to understanding the social responsibility of business, in which all prejudices and remnants called laws lose their meaning, since social responsibility becomes the main and determining criterion for evaluating business activities" .

Meanwhile, the article repeats the statements published earlier in the issue that Russian business, having stepped over the initial stage of its development, is looking for "a reasonable combination of its selfish and national interests. Business is increasingly in need of a responsible, strategically thinking counterparty, a partner who has all the power in his asset states - administrative, financial, foreign policy . While the state is currently experiencing a reverse process. It is degrading, the government's economic bloc is "completely inadequate to the most urgent tasks and challenges facing the country," focusing on solving tactical problems, completely ignoring strategy. Moreover, this is expressed not only in the fact that today in Russia "instead of a real tax reform, there is a profanation of half-measures; instead of a smart, careful cluster policy, there is a chaos of ill-conceived fiscal decisions" , but also in the fact that the modern state has the psychology of a temporary worker interested in momentary maximum benefit, without clear plans for the near future. Those. it is at a stage that Russian business has long outgrown.

Kudrin is Lenin today // Expert. 2004. No. 16.

Sources

• Nalbandyan Zurab. "The oligarchs can be pardoned in four years," Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said in London. // Labor. 2004. April 21.
• Mikhail Delyagin: I want to be baptized, damn it! // OPEC.Ru. 2004. April 22.