Photo: TASS

Managers of state-owned enterprises will face administrative liability if they do not approve privatization deals with the Federal Property Management Agency. Now there are no sanctions for this.

Punishment for Federal State Unitary Enterprises

Heads of federal state and municipal unitary enterprises (FSUEs and MUPs) must bear responsibility for non-coordination of privatization transactions with the supervising agency and the Federal Property Management Agency, Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday at a government meeting in Gorki.

Changes will be made to the Code of Administrative Offences. According to the Prime Minister, it is necessary to establish administrative penalties for those “who do not provide data on transactions with state property on time.” “And to strengthen control, administrative penalties are being introduced for late provision of information on accounting and property management. This could be a fine or disqualification,” Medvedev said.

The Code of Administrative Offenses will be supplemented with two new compounds, a representative of the Ministry of Economic Development told RBC. According to him, the heads of municipal unitary enterprises and federal state unitary enterprises, as well as the institutions themselves, will be held accountable for violating the procedure for disposing of property, in particular, we are talking about a fine in the amount of 1 to 10% of the price of the transaction, he says.

As an example of violations that should be eliminated by amendments to the Administrative Code, a representative of the Ministry of Economic Development cites the history of the loss of assets of a number of federal state unitary enterprises. According to the Federal Property Management Agency, in violation of the law and without the consent of the owner, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Second Printing House of the Federal Directorate of Medical-Biological and Extreme Problems under the Ministry of Health”, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise Scientific and Production Center “Gidrobios”, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “National Research Center Zarubezhskhema”, the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Tsentrrestavratsiya” issued guarantees to the bank CB “Moskovsky” capital" for third parties for debt arising on the basis of an uncontested court decision between a legal entity and a bank. The bank then seized the property of state-owned enterprises for unpaid debts.

The area of state property management is one of the most problematic; many scandals and lawsuits from entrepreneurs have accumulated, says Dmitry Lipatov, partner of the Delovoy Fairvater company. Every year, the Prosecutor General’s Office identifies about 100 thousand violations in the management of state property, the lawyer notes.

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They are monitoring privatization

In the spring of 2012, Dmitry Medvedev instructed the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, the Investigative Committee and Rosfinmonitoring to conduct checks on how privatization was proceeding. As a result, a new concept for managing federal property and a system of indicators characterizing the effectiveness of its management should have appeared. Around the same time, the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, proposed introducing criminal liability for violations during privatization, but then this idea did not find support.

“The problem of non-coordination of transactions is relevant not only for state-owned companies, but also for the private corporate sector, including companies with state participation. In this case, it is possible either outright failure to fulfill the obligation to coordinate or approve the transaction, or concealment of certain facts, for example, affiliation, when approving a transaction with an interest, explains Georgy Smirnov, an employee of the Investigative Committee. “There are also schemes to artificially create conditions under which the deal does not need to be formally approved.” For example, manipulation of the book value of assets, as a result of which the transaction does not fall under the definition of a large one. It is necessary to prevent these actions at an early stage of approval, preventing the asset from entering the hands of a person who will use the institution of a bona fide purchaser, after which it is very difficult to take the asset from him, he says.

Last year, the State Duma drew attention to the problem of the legality of privatization transactions. Deputy of the Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption Ilya Kostunov (United Russia) introduced a bill giving the FSB the right to check participants in privatization. The price of the issue is from 300 billion to 475 billion rubles, the deputy notes in the explanatory note to the project. According to the federal budget for 2015–2017, in 2015 alone, revenues from privatization should have amounted to 158.5 billion rubles.

“Dmitry Medvedev raised an important problem - the lack of adequate responsibility for officials selling state property. Those who today do not even fulfill the formal obligation to report the transaction to the Federal Property Management Agency certainly do not think about economic feasibility and state interests,” Kostunov believes.

If you don’t agree, you won’t sell