Andrey Makhonin / Vedomosti

The RFU is not in time to pay the salary arrears of Fabio Capello and his assistant Oreste Cinquini by December 19, a source close to the union told Vedomosti. The Federal Service for Labor and Employment (Rostrud) ordered the union to pay the money by this date after an unscheduled inspection in November. At that time, Rostrud discovered salary arrears to Capello and Cinquini. As of November 21, the date of the inspection completion, the union owed them more than 181 million rubles, Rostrud reported.

Capello has not received his salary for five months. It should be paid by the RFU, whose financial situation, according to the president of the union, Nikolai Tolstykh, is “grave.” Yesterday, Tolstykh, answering a question from Vedomosti about whether the union would be able to pay Capello before December 19, said: “The RFU is making every attempt to pay off the debt, we are interested in this, as well as in improving the financial situation of the RFU” (see inset). And he added: the union will continue these attempts after December 19.

After the deadline for complying with the order, the Moscow Labor Inspectorate will conduct an unscheduled inspection, Yegor Ivanov, head of the Federal Labor Inspectorate’s Department for Federal Supervision of Compliance with Labor Legislation, told Vedomosti.

For failure to comply with the order of Rostrud to liquidate the debt to Capello in a timely manner, the RFU official responsible for paying the salary may be disqualified by the court for a period of six months to three years, comments Valery Fedoreev, partner of the law firm CMS. In this case, the RFU will be obliged to dismiss the disqualified person. In addition, the court will probably prohibit him from holding management positions for the period of disqualification not only in the RFU, but also in other organizations, the lawyer believes. Tolstykh, to whom Rostrud along with the RFU issued an order, asked the prosecutor's office to evaluate the actions of the labor inspectors, but there is no response from it yet on the circumstances of this inspection, the RFU president said yesterday.

Since the penalty for failure to comply with the order provides not only for disqualification but also for a fine, given the difficult financial situation in the RFU, Rostrud at this stage may limit itself to a fine, believes Fedoreev from CMS. But the fine will not remove or suspend the RFU's obligation to pay Capello's salary, he notes.

The RFU budget for 2015 has not yet been approved, worries Olga Smorodskaya, president of FC Lokomotiv (Moscow). She hopes that a solution to the union's financial problems will soon be found, although there are no specific proposals on this issue yet. The RFU's income should be higher, and the union's management should think about what other opportunities there are for earning money, says Sergey Galitsky, member of the RFU executive committee, the main owner of the Magnit chain and FC Krasnodar.

Capello will still have to wait for his salary