Winter of anxiety

Russian business anxiously awaits new American sanctions. Forbses feel in particular danger.According to The Bell online publication, they hastily hire lawyers and lobbyists in Washington, but they are not able to take the threat. “Nothing is clear,” says one of them, who has already visited the US capital. “No one works on these sanctions, no one draws up a sanctions list, nor any criteria or sources of information that forms the basis in it.”

The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, as usual, warns that Moscow will “answer mirror”, Sberbank President German Gref says that compared to new sanctions, “The Cold War will seem to be a child’s fun”, the presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov says : “In the case when various restrictions are introduced to Russia, they, of course, cannot remain without an appropriate answer.” And the president himself promises to extend the amnesty for returning capital.

Meanwhile, foreign investors derive capital from Russia with an increased pace and analysts predict an “avalanche -like” outflow of non -residents.

Where does this fear come from? Apparently, its source was the article “How to determine the Kremlin ruling elite and its agents”, published on the website of the Atlantic Council (Russian translation here ). Its authors Anders Oslund, Daniel Frid, Andrei Illarionov and Andrei Piontkovsky write that in early February the US Department of Finance will present a report “On oligarchs and semi -state companies of the Russian Federation”, which should contain “identifying the most significant political figures and oligarchs in the Russian Federation, which are determined by their closeness to the Russian regime and their state.” The authors of the article offer criteria for this identification. On December 4, the Forum of Free Russia in Vilnius, guided by these criteria and supplementing them, approved the " list of Putin ." In the list of “Golden Children”, in particular Putin -Tikhonov E., Putin I. and Kabaeva A., in the section “Solovy” - Gundyaev V. (Kirill) and Andrey Norkin, in the section “Foreign Agents” - Shreder G., Berlusconi S. and Kissinger G., to the section “accomplices” - Gergiev V., Porechenkov M., Stone O.

What report are we talking about? It is required from the Ministry of Finance by the Law "Countering the opponents of America through sanctions", adopted by Congress this summer and signed by President Trump on August 2. The law codified sanctions imposed earlier by presidential decrees. For a more smooth passage, sanctions against Russia were combined into one document with sanctions against Iran and North Korea. The law was adopted in the situation of active opposition to the Trump administration. The president believed that he was connecting his hands and interferes with the leading of political bargaining, and also puts American business in disadvantage. However, the support of the law in both wards was so powerful that it was completely pointless to apply the presidential veto - Congress easily overcame it. The Senate passed the law in 98 votes against two, the House of Representatives - 419 against three. The president reluctantly signed it, adding a statement that this is a "bad deal". It was clear that the government would fulfill the law in a minimum volume.

On September 28, Senators John McCain and Benjamin Cardin, who introduced the bill to the upper house, decided to hurry the president. They sent him a letter in which they called him to apply the law "on the very full scale" and thereby "protect American interests." Senators asked to pay special attention to sectoral sanctions against the defense sector and intelligence and the energy industry, as well as the assistance of democratic institutions in Europe and the countries of the former USSR. They reminded the president that October 1 was the deadline for imposing sanctions against the defense sector of Russia.

After almost a month, the administration responded with a list of companies, to which sanctions could be applied. The list included the Admiralty Shipyard JSC, the Almaz-Antey concern, the Kalashnikov concern and other "family diamonds" of the Russian defense industry, as well as the FSB, SVR, GRU and their contractors. At the same time, the State Department, to which the law is charged with the obligation to draw up a list, complained about the complexity of the task and lack of personnel, and the administration officials emphasized that this was just a sketch of the list.

Now the new deadline is approaching. The law says that no later than 180 days after his entry into force, the Minister of Finance, after consultations with the director of national intelligence and the State Secretary, must send the Congress a detailed report, which was discussed above. This term expires on February 1. The hopes of advocates of the maximum tightening of sanctions and the fears of the Russian oligarchs are associated with this position of law.

But so far there are no signs that the administration will meet on time, and most importantly - that the law will conscientiously fulfill. For example, Donald Trump signed a decree on the execution of the Global Law of Magnitsky with a delay of 11 days against the deadline, and only one person - the son of the Prosecutor General Artem Chaika appears from Russian citizens in the sanctions list. There were no more malicious violators of human rights and corrupt officials in Russia. This is a mockery of the law.

So it may well become that this time the alarm will be false.