President and Chairman of the Board of Sberbank German Gref turned to First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov with a request to support amendments to the privatization law, obliging applicants for the purchase of state assets to place a deposit in the amount of 20% of the starting price in accounts in state banks or in banks whose deposits can temporarily allocate budget funds.

Currently, in accordance with the law, an applicant for participation in tenders before privatization must make a deposit in the amount of 10% of the initial price to an account with the Federal Treasury.

According to a source familiar with the situation, Shuvalov instructed the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank and the Federal Property Management Agency to consider the proposal. The Ministry of Finance has previously supported this initiative.

In this case, we are talking only about the privatization process, which is organized by an investment bank or an independent property seller, the source says. In recent years, all major transactions for the sale of government stakes have been organized in this way.

The Ministry of Economic Development and the Federal Property Management Agency , according to the source, are already preparing amendments that will increase the size of the deposit to 20%, but there are no plans to change their location.

Sberbank motivates the need to transfer the deposit to the account of the sales organizer, opened in one of the commercial banks, which is either state-owned or included in the list of federal budget funds selected for temporary placement, as follows: a complex scheme for obtaining information about the deposit increases the risk of its untimely return ( deposit must be returned within five days from the date of bidding). And since the seller receives information from the Federal Property Management Agency, which, in turn, receives it from the Federal Treasury, the process may drag on and cause justified claims against the auction organizer.

Also, this procedure, according to Sberbank, increases the risk of information leakage about the number and names of applicants, which may negatively affect the progress of privatization.

Gref asks to oblige privatization participants to place deposits in state banks, and not in the treasury