To get around Western sanctions, Russian oligarchs get trump cards from wide trousers

As it became completely clear last week, Russians really unites dislike. Dislike of Abramovich. The news about the routine delay in extending the owner of the Chelsea football club in the UK caused excessive streaming in a wide variety of layers of Russian society, swinging a joyful wave first from Moscow to the very outskirts, and then spilled out - in the near and distant foreign country. And the Infa who came after the lightning speed received by the oligarch of the Israeli passport completely demolished the roof of the commentators, giving rise to numerous conspiracy theories about the near end of the world in the tunnel.
Fortunately for some and unfortunately for others, rumors about the sunset of the Russian oligarchy in the West were somewhat exaggerated.

Abramovich really, like some other representatives of the Russian “Forbes list”, is experiencing some temporary difficulties today and experiences annoying minor inconvenience, but as the old proverb says (either Russian, or Ukrainian - who will now sort them out), while the fat dries, the thin will die. Therefore, in advance, they take places in the auditorium may not see the denouement until the end of the session.

A random victim of the war

True, as often happens, it is in the middle: Abramovich encountered purely technical problems in the UK, but he could not have many, many years (for example, Chelsea would not have flown out of the Premier League) if it weren’t for political problems that arose in relations between Russia and the West in general and Russia and Great Britain in particular. In a sense, Abramovich turned out to be a hostage to not his war.

Starting a hybrid offensive to the West, the Kremlin was forced to sacrifice the safety of their “wallets”, which suddenly turned out to be cut off from bases in the deep rear of the enemy.

They did not arrange an operation to save Private Abramovich, offering him with his colleagues to leave the encirclement on his own, which he, in fact, is now engaged in.

However, contrary to the hope that many Russians cherish deep down, Abramovich’s entourage is not a “boiler” at all, and the likelihood that he will boil there is still doubtful. Great Britain, for its part, is desperately trying to squeeze between the Haribda of economic expediency and the scillage of political necessity, and it turns out to be not very good for her. It is only in the nightmares of Kremlin propagandists that the West thinks only about how to impose more sanctions on Russia. The western elites in the overwhelming majority are concerned about the exact opposite - how to avoid a sanctions race and not get involved in an economic war with Russia.

Nobody wants to lose the money of Abramovich and other Russian oligarchs, not to mention the fact that completely clean and transparent billions are a beast rarely found in living nature.

Multi -billion dollar fines, almost annually paid by the most respectable Western financial institutions involved in the most diverse corruption scandals and money laundering schemes, are clear evidence of this. However, the Kremlin with its assertiveness does not leave the British a chance. The temperature in society after each demonstration campaign like an incident in Salisbury is growing. The government is forced to respond to this. Therefore, Great Britain, guided by the call of the great Chekhov, squeezes out the sanctions by drop.

Nothing supernatural so far has happened to Abramovich. There is nothing to do with sanctions, both British and American, non -transparency of his visa. He just lost a privileged attitude towards himself, which provided him with good connections and good lawyers (it is known that good ties and good lawyers always act better than just good connections). When issuing or re -registering an investor visa, any entrepreneur, regardless of the status and country of “registration”, must explain the origin of his capital and prove its purity. But, as stated in the cult Russian film, the beginning of the "zero",

The system can “raise” the eye on this procedure, and maybe “first -and -up”.

You can check the origin of the last ten million, or you can ask you to tell the story of the first ten - and this, as they say (or at least they said before) in Odessa, are two big differences. One of the Rockefellers, in my opinion, said: you can explain everything except the first million. So, until now, Abramovich has been asked mainly about the last million, and now, apparently, they decided to move deep into the historical ladder, which was puzzled by a lot.

Frankly, the investor visa Abramovich was needed all these years as a hare of sandals. He was not going to live in the UK, and he could not afford to have a fiscal (tax) nature, and it is enough to have a tourist visa to visit football matches. This could not interfere with the possession of the Chelsea club. It was for him a “bauble”, which he got on the occasion, because it was inexpensive and cool. But in a situation where the British authorities began to ask too many stupid (from a conceptual point of view) questions, the “bauble” became a too expensive toy.

Could Abramovich solve the problem? Great Britain is a legal state with a very peculiar and independent judicial system, therefore, most likely, yes. But this would not have been very fast and would cost him several tens of millions of dollars (which, however, would make several top law firms in City happy). Of course, one could, as a simple Russian citizen, turn to the British Consulate in Moscow for a tourist visa, but this would be a loss of a face. In addition, the moment was missed, the topic became public, the British government, under pressure from public opinion, could have become a formal position, considering that Abramovich had already managed to get acquainted with all the sights of London, and does not imply a tourist visa. In short, the risk of refusal was great, which could create the domino effect and influence the position of other states.

One way or another, but it turned out that the most profitable and economical way to solve the problem is the acquisition of citizenship of a third country, which has an agreement with Britain with the UK. Abramovich was rapidly acquired by the Israeli passport, and the British government confirmed that he did not see obstacles to visiting Great Britain already in the status of a citizen of another wonderful country, which was required to prove. Thus,

Having acquired the citizenship of Israel, Abramovich acted exactly as he was accustomed to acting so far - he saved the money. Nothing personal, only business.

A deed of slow action

Of course, the curious story with the Abramovich visa, which stirred up the Russian community, should not be complicated, but it is not worth it and overprove it. Choosing citizenship, the Russian oligarch of Jewish origin was not limited by Israel, the hospitality of which he neglected more than a quarter of a century. There are at least a dozen passports that Abramovich could purchase at a ridiculous price for him that would give him the right to unhindered entry into the UK and the vast majority of other attractive countries on the planet. Of course, these passports are not as prestigious as Israeli, but not as toxic for Abramovich (given the very specific interest in him in Russia). The question of why right now Abramovich decided to finally take advantage of the privilege, which always existed for him, is in this situation immature.

The answer, apparently, is that in addition to the visa in this case, Abramovich solved some more problems that, with the help of any other passport, whether it was Panama, Saint-Chitsky, Cyprus or Maltese, cannot be solved.

The answer to the question of what tasks are it on the surface.

Israel is a refuge state, and if Abramovich acquired his passport, then he believes that at some point this shelter can be in demand.

There is no direct sanctions threat against Abramovich. Its inclusion in the List of the US Treasury does not mean nothing, because this list itself does not mean nothing - does not imply any consequences for the persons mentioned in it and is an internal political bargaining coin in relations between the Trump and Congress administration.

But Abramovich turned out to be clamped in the sandwich between two incidents - the “incident of Yukos” and “Deripaska’s incident”. On the one hand, the history of the once influential entrepreneur in Russia, closed for 10 years in prison, before he was given the opportunity to leave west, although he faded, but continues to be an actual precedent. It encourages the most influential member of the Yeltsin "family", like many of its other colleagues in the workshop, to strive to reduce the distance and be prepared to leave at the right time, bypassing the preparatory ten -year period. But, of course, the fresh demonstration of Deripaska, arranged by Trump into the Kremlin’s edification, is much more relevant. Because worse than “you can’t stay more”, maybe “there is nowhere else to go” (and nothing ...).

Abramovich, of course, is in a different position than Deripaska, and if the hands of the American administration reach him, then last. Although the establishment of bridges with the future owner of the White House, apparently, was part of the “package of services” of a socially responsible businessman in Russia (it seems that there was not a single rich person in Russia, who, one way or another, would not have been negotiating with Donald Trump on the eve of the elections - Vekselberg, Gorky, Agalarov, etc.), apparently, the bunch of Abramovich - the bunch Kushner had a special privileged value. The problem, however, is that if something suddenly goes so and the sanctions in relation to Abramovich will be applied (in the end, Trump is not exhausted by Trump, now there is already a British “Magnitsky Law”), then Abramovich’s position can immediately become worse than Deripaska. Deripaska can endlessly shift the burden of proving his guilt to the fragile shoulders of Themis, but Abramovich in this sense “self -served”, untied Femis's eyes with his own hands, when he lit up in the unfortunate old process with Berezovsky, who, due to misunderstanding, is considered to be won to them.

Immediately after the verdict was announced in the lawsuit of Berezovsky, I wrote that for Abramovich this is Pirrova Victory. The hidden threat of this case for him is that, defending himself from the attacks of the opponent,

He was forced to voluntarily admit his affiliation with the state and regime, calling himself the “roof” of Berezovsky (with his light hand this word has now firmly entered the English legal vocabulary).

As they say, no one pulled the tongue. From the height of today, we can confidently say that it would be better if he paid a couple of billions of billions of the plaintiff-it would be cheaper. Under Abramovich, this “deed of slow action” will now forever tick down. It is worth it to give someone a political team “FAS”, and it will explode under his chair. Therefore, the Israeli passport will not hurt him - it is time to think about the future. Therefore, at the same time with the visa Abramovich at a similar price, it also got insurance - it will not hurt.

The end of the "family" history

As Lenin wrote, one cannot live in society and be free from society without flying to the moon. Today, Russian oligarchs of the first and most powerful waves, which have long and firmly settled in the West, have been forced to master this alphabetical truth with a creak. Since the base on the Luna Roscosmos has not managed to provide them yet, they feel more and more their lack of free from the policy pursued by the Kremlin. For decades, the regime has fulfilled its “social contract” in relation to the “family”, and the “family” did not express its dissatisfaction with the internal and external policy of the regime, no matter what gloomy outlines it acquired.

But the Kremlin went too far in its war against the West, and the oligarchs of the old formation turned out to be hostages in this war.

Now, from their proximity to the Kremlin, wherever they throw, "continuous discomfort."

Discomfort is by no means a catastrophe, it only creates a headache and makes you spend more money on lawyers. But the trend has been outlined, and sooner or later the “family” will have to determine which side of the story is it on? Living in two houses becomes dangerous and invoice.