The President has finally found an adequate response to the "Magnitsky Act" by banning Russian officials from having accounts and assets abroad. But the future of Russian privatization has already been determined by American lawmakers

The President has finally found an adequate response to the "Magnitsky Act" by banning Russian officials from having accounts and assets abroad. But the future of Russian privatization has already been determined by American lawmakers.

On Tuesday, the President of the Russian Federation submitted to the State Duma a draft federal law prohibiting a wide range of officials from holding foreign accounts and securities of foreign companies under threat of removal from office.

Unlike the soft, "liberal" revenue control law, this is a hard, tough act. It can be seen even from the preamble: “In order to ensure national security, streamline lobbying activities and increase the effectiveness of combating corruption, a ban is established on persons making decisions on duty that affect issues of sovereignty and national security” to have accounts in foreign banks and own securities of non-residents ( both governments and private companies).

The list of persons on whom, as it turned out, the burden of Russian sovereignty lies, is extremely wide. These are federal and regional officials, members of the board of directors of the Central Bank - in general, all officials appointed by the president and the government, as well as employees of state companies and state corporations who receive their posts in the same way.

Moreover, the law limits the right to own foreign assets to their spouses and minor children. Of course, an official can have not only a wife, but also, for example, a mother-in-law, but it is important to remember that only the bonds of marriage form legally significant relations between relatives, even close ones. Both in Russian jurisdiction and in foreign ones.

It is possible, of course, to scatter assets to nominees, but where is the guarantee that these persons will not “privatize” them later (in this regard, it is appropriate to recall the epic trial between Berezovsky and Abramovich).

So, officials and their spouses who have foreign assets (and who doesn’t?) will be required to close foreign accounts and sell non-residents’ securities, returning their savings to their homeland within 3 months from the date the law comes into force. Or, resign. A three-month period for getting rid of the surplus is also given to those who intend to apply for filling public positions.

Those who still doubt that all this is serious should familiarize themselves with the list of grounds for conducting a check on those who decide to hide their assets abroad. This includes data from law enforcement agencies and executive authorities, including regional and political parties, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, foreign banks and international organizations, the Public Chamber and - bingo! - national media. In general, everything except anonymous denunciations.

To verify such information, it will be allowed to involve law enforcement agencies, including conducting operational-search activities, as well as to conduct intimate conversations with individuals, including non-residents, to demand additional information from “suspects”.

In general, if the law is adopted in this form and begins to work, then officials will really have to make a choice between foreign assets and the vertical of power.

This is already a serious response to the “Magnitsky Act”: do you want to let our comrades in? Yes, we will not let them out, because without money it makes no sense for them to go anyway.

If the “anti-Magnit” “Dima Yakovlev law” challenged the active part of civil society, then the bill introduced by Putin is already a serious challenge to the elite, which will be forced to divide into “us” and “them”.

It is very interesting how she will take it and what she will do in return.

How much does the Magnitsky Act cost?

Let's consider some macroeconomic prerequisites for such behavior of the Russian elite and predict the long-term consequences.

One of the main tasks of Dmitry Medvedev's "intermediate" term and Vladimir Putin's third term was the gradual legalization of capital accumulated by the political and security establishment in the process of state asset privatization (starting with the "Yukos case"). The results were expressed, for example, in a certain liberalization of criminal prosecution for economic crimes and a reduction in administrative pressure on business. It was planned that after the reshuffle, Putin would continue the same line, but much more actively (remember his “economic” pre-election articles), and besides, he would launch an anti-corruption campaign and carry out deoffshorization.

The logic of the process was broken by the well-known internal political processes and the very “Magnitsky act”.

Why is this act so terrible for the Russian elite? The fact that a global hunt was announced for the assets of persons involved in economic crimes committed on the territory of Russia. This is both a precedent and a trial balloon. After all, if Browder succeeded, then with even greater grounds it can happen with interest groups connected, say, with Yukos shareholders.

For example, back in 2009, the American Yukos International (represented by Bruce Misamore) filed a lawsuit with the Strasbourg Court demanding $100 billion in damages from the Russian government due to the bankruptcy of the Russian company. The ECHR is unlikely to satisfy such claims, but is Strasbourg necessary if now issues can be resolved in Washington, through the Senate and Congress?

But there is also an American court, which, as the noisy story with the Schneerson library shows, can decide in favor of American plaintiffs, ignoring both the concept of Russian sovereignty and the negative reaction of the US authorities.

Finally, if not even the whole of Europe, but at least the UK joins the American sanctions, then it will be a disaster. Because the lion's share of the assets of the Russian elite is somehow tied to either American or British jurisdictions (including offshore satellites).

In general, unlike the country, the Russian corrupt capital really found itself in the ring of enemies.

There are perhaps two ways out of this situation, but we will not consider the possibility of real punishment by the forces of the Russian state of those who took away private property in violation of the law. There is only one course left - towards isolationism, towards a sovereign economy, and the country will obviously follow it.

It takes concrete shape in the symmetrical stories of a new round of privatization (combined with deoffshorization) and the creation of the Russian Financial Agency, which will invest up to 2.5 trillion in reserve funds and pension savings of the population.

Privatization aircraft

In itself, the idea of ​​printing out the state "pod" is perhaps timely. The country's economy is in desperate need of investments, including in infrastructure projects and in the creation of new large enterprises, and what's there, entire clusters, and the money of sovereign funds is ideal for these purposes: there are a lot of them, they are cheap, they are long.

But the use of these funds in the framework of "big privatization" is a decision with a minus sign. Because it means the redemption of state assets for state money (and the money of future pensioners), and at administratively established prices (see Novaya Gazeta, No. 15. - “Gosplan goes to I__PO__.”)

At the same time, RFA will not be the only major player in the market for buying state assets. It is obvious that a possible sale opens the way for the very failed legalization of the accumulated administrative and corruption rent, but already within the country. Within the framework of the “privatization aircraft” theory, which I proposed three years ago (see Novaya Gazeta, No. 20, 2010) . The idea was that serious state assets could only be sold to "sovereign people" at the expense of funds accumulated by them offshore.

What are the risks of a scheme involving both offshore and state capital? That the process will be controlled in both cases.

That is, if there is an “agreed” buyer for a specific asset, then the RFA (or its agents) will quite possibly consider it “uninteresting”, and it will leave at the agreed price. But if this is a non-core asset of a state holding that needs money, then the RFA can buy it dearly by paying a premium from sovereign funds (which, in turn, can also be used to buy out "interesting" assets).

At the same time, public money invested in privatization will no longer be invested in infrastructure and other projects that make economic sense, which means that the country's real losses will be multiplied. Of course, it is pointless to talk about the exact amounts yet, but their order is obvious - these are trillions of rubles.

It is also worth adding to this the benefit that Russia will not receive from the sale of its assets at the highest possible market price. Such a price could be obtained by listing on the New York or London stock exchanges. Practice shows that companies traded in Russia are 25-40% cheaper than their counterparts on the leading platforms. This is a discount for the negative characteristics of our jurisdiction (corruption, insecurity of property rights, poor quality of legislation). But we can no longer go to London and New York because of unacceptable legal risks. This means that when selling in the country to quasi-state, including offshore, purchasers, the state will receive less of those same 25-40% of the maximum price. And when buying with money, the RFA will, in fact, receive nothing at all, because this is shifting money from one pocket to another.

Corrupt outflow

There is another aspect of Russian economic reality, tied to the topic of cross-border movement of capital, only not for entry, but for exit.

This is not about the notorious “outflow”, and certainly not in the context of the “bad investment climate” mediated by the “bloody regime” (although the climate is bad, and there are questions about the regime).

Let's start with the fact that the "net capital outflow by the private sector" indicator itself, calculated by our Central Bank, is unique on a global scale, because no one else thinks so. The rest of humanity uses the Private Capital Flows indicator (the method of the World Bank). It is translated into Russian in exactly the same way, but has a different structure and, as a result, completely different results. For example, at the end of 2011, the Central Bank recorded “net capital outflow by the private sector” at $80.5 billion, while the World Bank estimated Private Capital Flows at “only” $32.3 billion (it’s even strange that our propaganda ignores this fact). ).

What is the difference? As the experts of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and Ernst & Young found out, our Central Bank attributes to the export of capital such items as “net errors and omissions”, the cost of acquiring aircraft, payments from subsidiaries of foreign banks to parent companies, structuring offshore operations.

It is especially interesting with offshore companies, because, from the point of view of the Russian layman, they represent an outflow of capital in its purest form. However, according to the calculations of RDIF and Ernst & Young, in the period 2007-2011, direct investments from Russia into offshore zones (total $135.6 billion) are almost equal to the movement of capital in the opposite direction ($133 billion). And if a “privatization plane” flies, then we will also get a net inflow. That is, offshore is, of course, about tax evasion and hiding beneficiaries, but not about capital outflow.

So, minus the aforementioned positions, the “net export of capital by the private sector” indicator, according to the Central Bank, in 2011 amounted to $40.8 billion, of which $32.8 billion fell on the “Dubious transactions” column (note that this figure is amazingly close to World Bank data).

It is not a fact that all transactions that the Central Bank classifies as “doubtful” are of a corrupt nature, but it is obvious that, for example, those 230 million dollars that the authorities of several European countries are now seeking as part of an alternative investigation of the “Magnitsky case” have clearly enriched this statistic.

Here it is, the “bad” capital outflow, which is really worth fighting. The problem is that it is cross-border in nature, which means that it is necessary to interact with financial intelligence and law enforcement agencies of European countries and the United States. But now we have a cold war with them. And this means that our government, even if it really wants to, will not be able to block the export of corruption proceeds. And these are also the country's direct losses, measured, as we see, in tens of billions of dollars a year, which are unlikely to be reduced because of our reaction to the Magnitsky Act.