Photo: Oleg Yakovlev/RBC

The capital amnesty adopted by the State Duma is unlikely to become an incentive for deoffshorization. It will probably be most popular among former officials and current holders of foreign accounts.

“We need to finally turn the offshore page in the history of our country,” President Vladimir Putin demanded in his last address to the Federal Assembly. To those who respond to the call (the third in a row since 2012), the president promised a complete amnesty of returned capital. “They are earned and received differently,” he noted.

On Friday, the State Duma adopted the amnesty law in the third reading. It was not possible to make it complete - contradictions arose with FATF (the international organization for combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism).

And it is unlikely to become an incentive for deoffshorization.

Open up to the state

In order not to confuse the target audience, the authorities renamed the amnesty into the law on voluntary declaration. “We don’t want it to be meant, even in some indirect way, that when people come to the tax authority they confess to some kind of offense,” explained First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov at the end of March before introducing the bill to the State Duma.

The essence of the campaign is that any individual, until December 31, 2015, can disclose his property (securities, real estate, transport) and bank accounts abroad. In exchange, the declarant will receive immunity from tax and criminal liability that could threaten for the acquisition and use of assets before January 1, 2015 (see certificate).

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“Having declared this property, [the beneficiaries will] know for sure that no one will ever come to them and ask where it comes from,” Shuvalov assured. The circulation of information will be limited by the tax secrecy regime. And it will be prohibited to use data from declarations for criminal prosecution or conducting tax audits of declarants.

“The user profile of this law is not very clear,” the tax manager of a large telecommunications company is puzzled: people who receive legal income abroad are already eager to declare it in Russia. And those who purposefully withdrew capital and went into hiding are unlikely to want to reveal themselves in any case, he argues.

Businessmen are scared

It is useless to hide, warned the Chairman of the State Duma Tax Committee Andrei Makarov at the first reading of the amnesty law: bank secrecy de facto does not exist. “The world is rapidly becoming more and more transparent,” agreed Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov. And from 2018, countries will switch to automatic exchange of tax data. Amnesty, according to Shatalov, is a good chance to “start life from scratch.”

But it is unlikely that many businessmen will want to use this chance. “Amnesty is a bonus if you decide to stay [in Russia],” sneers a person close to the board of directors of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. The success of the campaign will directly depend on trust in the state, he notes.

There can be problems with trust, a high-ranking government official admits: if desired, any transaction can be classified as fraud, and deputies refused to release declarants from liability under this article. Full disclosure means ending up in a bad legal and judicial system, worries the top manager of a financial company, “where business can be taken away not through arbitration claims, but through criminal cases against the owners.” Offshores mean not only low taxes and concealment of the beneficiary, points out a businessman from the Forbes list: assets are more reliably protected there.

An amnesty can be a salvation for those businessmen who have already come to the attention of law enforcement officers. The court or investigator may terminate the criminal prosecution of the declarant under “amnestied” articles. You will not have to compensate for the substantiated damage.

Officials are scared

“Officials will be able to take full advantage of this law,” Deputy Minister Shatalov said in the State Duma. But there will be no forgiveness, he warned: for violating the law on civil service, one will have to answer. As well as for the legalization of criminal proceeds and the financing of terrorism.

The declarant is exempt from liability only for tax, customs and currency violations. First of all, this is evasion of taxes and customs duties, explains Mikhail Kazantsev, partner at the law firm Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasyev and Partners. But by declaring property abroad, the official will be fired: this is a direct violation of the civil service law. In addition, law enforcement agencies may want to check the origin of funds that the official transferred abroad, Kazantsev argues. But the amnesty does not apply to corruption offenses. “If the money comes from bribes and there are no other sources of income, then, probably, the official will not declare it,” the lawyer concludes. “No normal official will use this law!” - a high-ranking government official is categorical. Rather, this is a law for former officials, says a person close to the RSPP: “An excellent way to launder old bribes.”

For officials, this is a chance to legalize corruption proceeds, says former prefect of the Northern Administrative District of Moscow Oleg Mitvol. Formally, the declarant can be a nominal holder of assets, he notes. But it will be difficult to convict an official of corruption: this requires a second party - the one who gave the bribe.

Special currency case

The amnesty gives a good chance to violators of currency laws who have legal capital.

Russian currency legislation is designed in such a way that it is easier to be a violator than to comply with it, sighs the tax manager of a large holding company. For example, failure to credit income received abroad to a Russian bank account is considered a violation and entails a fine of up to 100% of the amount. Many people trust Western institutions to manage their finances, the manager continues. In this case, all income from management is credited to accounts in foreign banks. “It turns out that even if you declare taxes on the income received, you are still guilty, since you are violating currency laws!” — RBC’s interlocutor laments. Many have opened accounts and are now afraid to legalize them, states senior partner of Pepeliaev Group Ivan Khamenushko: “This is a widespread situation - almost every second person is among the middle class.”

Currency legislation has forced people to go offshore, says an asset manager for wealthy Russians. Clients transferred funds to offshore companies called “wallets.” And now, due to the deoffshorization campaign, these people’s risks have increased.

“The amnesty law will allow such law-abiding or semi-law-abiding citizens to get out of an ambiguous situation normally,” the tax manager hopes. True, after this it is necessary to liberalize the currency legislation, he urges: “Otherwise the amnesty will not have a serious effect.”

A word about justice

For officials and entrepreneurs close to the authorities, the geopolitical situation is not in favor of foreign jurisdictions, states a businessman from the Forbes list: sanctions are being introduced and demands to disclose the origin of funds. In principle, it is better if officials keep money in Russia, RBC’s interlocutor believes: “If they keep money abroad, then this is not our elite.”

Amnesty is an unfair social measure, says an official from the government’s financial and economic bloc. Anyone who did not comply with the law and withdrew funds receives free forgiveness and saves at least 13% (personal income tax rate), he is dissatisfied: “And the person who has been paying taxes all his life is being made a fool.”

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