| The airline is being asked to pay for benefits The Prosecutor General's Office sent a letter to the government with a proposal to recover from Transaero Airlines the amount of all customs duties for foreign aircraft purchased by this company since 1999. Until now, Transaero has been exempt from these payments by government decree issued in 1999. And the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade filed an arbitration claim against Transaero demanding payment of customs duties. The company itself reacted calmly to these steps of government agencies, especially since on January 14, 2004, the Supreme Arbitration Court had already considered a claim that was essentially similar and did not find anything illegal in Transaero’s actions.
The background of the letter to the government regarding Transaero, according to the newspaper Vremya Novostey, is as follows. This company received exemption from duties on foreign-made aircraft, equipment for their operation, as well as spare parts and engines temporarily imported into Russia twice: in 1994 and 1999, both times for a five-year period. If the first exemption was given by the government “just like that,” then after the government decree of 1998 “On additional measures to support civil aviation,” it became impossible to simply provide such benefits. It was stated there that benefits on customs duties are provided only for those airlines that enter into an investment agreement with the Ministry of Economy and some domestic manufacturer for the purchase of Russian aircraft. Therefore, in November 1999, Transaero signed an investment agreement with the Ministry of Economy, under which it committed to purchase ten Tu-204 aircraft through the leasing company Ilyushin-Finance Co. in 2001-2003.
Although the second duty exemption is set to expire this year, the deal to purchase the Tu-204 has not yet taken place. Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov drew the attention of Deputy Prosecutor General Vladimir Kolesnikov to this fact at a hearing in the State Duma, deputy Nikolai Gonchar. Having studied the situation, Vladimir Ustinov’s department considered it necessary to inform the government about the current situation. The letter notes that as a result of Transaero’s failure to fulfill its obligations, significant damage was caused to the country’s economic interests. However, the amount of damage is not stated, and the document itself is an ordinary information message, of which the Prosecutor General’s Office sends out quite a lot and which do not always entail any serious conclusions about the persons and organizations mentioned in them.
The Ministry of Economic Development went somewhat further in the fight for the return of Transaero customs duties. As Nikolai Popov, head of the Department of Legal Support of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, told Interfax yesterday, this department filed a claim with the arbitration court about the invalidity of the investment agreement with the Transaero company. “We demand that the investment agreement be terminated and that Transaero recover the amount of the unjustifiably received benefit,” he said.
Transaero's director of public relations, Sergei Bykhal, told the Vremya Novostey newspaper yesterday that the company is still ready to purchase the Tu-204 mentioned in the agreement and is even very interested in this, since it is experiencing a serious shortage of carrying capacity. The agreement has not yet been fulfilled, according to Mr. Bykhal, only because Transaero has not received a well-developed commercial proposal from the Tu-204 manufacturer over all these years. Regarding the arbitration claim of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, Mr. Bykhal recalled that on January 14 of this year the Supreme Arbitration Court considered the claim filed by Siberia Airlines against the Russian government regarding the unlawful provision of customs benefits to Transaero. The court rejected this claim, finding nothing reprehensible in the actions of the participants in the 1999 investment agreement. Alexander SHVAREV, Mikhail KUKUSHKIN |
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