Montenegrin puzzles

What threatens the candidate for Navalny's "Forgotten Business" in the Balkans

In the Mosgorisburkom, they are in no hurry to shoot Alexei Navalny from the elections

The scandal around the “Secret Business of Navalny” in Montenegro erupted on August 20 with the filing of the pro -government blogger Stanislav Apropyana (Politrash). He published screenshots of the site of the Central Register of Montenegrin organizations, from which it followed that Alexey Navalny, Maria Gaidar and Mikhail Eshkin established the MRD Company in November 2007, the status of which is still “active” in the register.

At the headquarters of Navalny, at first, the version was nominated that these data appeared on the site as a result of its hacking hackers. But in the evening of August 22, the Prime Agency (the division of the State RIA Novosti) published a press release from the Tax Service of Montenegro, which said that there was no hacking, and “Mr. Alexey Navalny "is really listed as a co -founder of this company. True, in the same document it was explained that the registration of the company was not completed, since its general director Eshkin did not submit an application for MRD Company to the register of taxpayers.

Navalny himself said that he “has no and never had any real estate, accounts or other material assets in Montenegro,” and expressed the hope that a lawyer, whom the headquarters had already sent to Montenegro, could clarify the situation. However, Mikhail Degtyarev, candidate for mayor from the LDPR, has already informed the media that he would seek the withdrawal of Navalny from the elections for violation of electoral legislation.

It should be recalled that in Art. 76 of the Federal Law “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Participate in the Referendum of Citizens of the Russian Federation” In May this year, a new basis for canceling the registration of a candidate for any elected position - “establishing the fact of ownership and (or) use of foreign financial instruments” really appeared. But the question is whether it is possible to consider an unheated and unemployed company with such a tool. In the law itself, this concept is not specified, and experts do not have an unambiguous opinion on this subject.

On the one hand, as the New Times explained the President of the Russian Financial Corporation Andrei Nechaev, "if the company is organized in the form of a joint -stock company or in any other form that implies securities, then it falls under these restrictions." The same can be said about a limited liability company, where co -owners have their own shares. “In that case,” Nechaev believes, “the court, most likely, will still consider it a foreign asset. Because, if the company is registered-it conducts activities or does not conduct, then the company itself, regardless of its legal and legal form, is an investment in a financial instrument. ”

On the other hand, in offshore jurisdictions, as the expert emphasized, "traditionally a person who establishes or buys a company does not contribute to the authorized capital, he pays an intermediary company or lawyers, pays for its annual service." “Formally, he does not bring anything to the company itself, he simply buys legal services, and here it can be argued that he has not acquired any asset,” Nechaev concluded.

The authorities still seem to be inclined to the second option. In any case, the chairman of the Moscow City Writing Commission (MGIK) Valentin Gorbunov hastened to inform Interfax that the law does not contain a direct ban on having a business abroad for candidates to mayor. And acting Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, speaking on the evening of August 22 on the air of Echo of Moscow, expressed the opinion that "no one needs to be removed," because "this will only damage the election campaign in general and the situation that is in Moscow today."

So even if MGIK receives official confirmation from Montenegro, he may well limit himself to the candidate Navalny, for example, oral warning, as happened based on the results of an “illegal campaign”, discovered on August 13 in a “bad apartment” on purebred boulevard. If only, of course, by that time the concept at the very top will not change again and Alexei Navalny will not turn from a living but harmless symbol of these “most honest elections” into a real threat to the “main candidate”.

Photo: ITAR-TASS