"Yandex. Reciters"

The Kremlin wants to get control of the IT company for the elections to the State Duma

Last week, the Yandex shares fell by 20% against the background of discussion in the State Duma of the bill on the restriction of foreign capital in Internet companies. This is the third time in the last year, when the actions of the Russian authorities bring down the cost of the most high -tech company of Russia. And now the authorities are seriously configured to the script of the “soft nationalization” of Yandex, experts say.

The odious bill to the State Duma was introduced in July from United Russia and a member of the Committee on Information Policy, IT and communications Anton Gorelkin, saying that in such “significant, strategic enterprises for the Russian IT market”, such as Yandex or Mail.Ru Group, it is necessary to limit a foreign possession of 20% of shares or shares.

Until this moment, Gorelkin practically did not show legislative activity in comparison with other deputies: in two years in the State Duma he introduced and maintained projects only 12 times, the last two times in July this year and in December of the past.

Basically, Gorelkin deals with information security and protection of personal data, supporting government initiatives in this area.

In particular, he was the author of the bill on the ban on the processing of personal data of minors without the consent of his parents, together with Marina Mukobenova introduced a bill in which he proposed increasing the limit of advertising in television programs, supported the ban on Telegram, and also introduced a bill on limiting the share of foreign aggregators, which is also directed against "Yandex."

“Gorelkin works in the State Duma only the first convocation, before that he was, in fact, the press secretary of the head of the Kemerovo region Aman Tuleyev and expressed his loyalty to the regional administration and personally to the governor. Its connections have regional, not federal weight. Therefore, he is trying in every possible way to support the federal agenda and receive support for more influential groups of interests, ”said Svetlana Telnova, head of the Western Siberian Anti-Corruption Center.

IT expert Mikhail Klimarev agrees that Gorelkin himself could hardly come up with such a tricky scheme:

“This is a provincial deputy, I read his telegram channel with the pathos name“ The Gossiper of the Internet ”. And because he writes there, it is clear that a person clearly does not understand the problem. ”

There are different versions on the market about whose handwriting a bill against Yandex is written. For example, an appetite for absorption of the company has long been attributed to Sberbank. “The capture of Yandex would be in Herman Gref, who has ambitions, but his own Internet projects, with the exception of Sberbank-Online, failed,” says Klimarev. And if Yandex went into the ownership of Mail.Ru Group, which belongs to Alisher Usmanov, this would allow the holding to get about 85% of the advertising market in the Russian Internet.

In both cases, we are talking about transferring Yandex to the most close to the state companies that can protect the IT company from “foreign influence”. As noted by analysts "Renaissance Capital",

It does not matter who will be appointed partner of the search engine on the part of the state: Gazprom, VTB, RDIPI, Sberbank or someone else-free days for Yandex will be considered.

It is noteworthy that immediately after the appearance of the bill Gorekina, the Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications Konstantin Noskov criticized. They even forgot about the initiative for a while, while in August the first deputy head of the United Russia faction Andrei Isaev said that the party supported Gorelkin’s proposal. According to Isaev, at first the bill was “not hot”, but the situation changed after the news about the ban on the operation of old cars fell into the top of the news and search aggregators, including Yandex.

We are talking about the text of Kommersant, which stated that the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy and Industry proposed to legislatively ban the operation of old cars. Having reacted with a great delay in the emergence of the publication, the State Duma said that categorically against such prohibitions for individuals, and all the guilt was transferred to the news policy of the aggregator, which supposedly "intentionally pumps the socio-political situation in the country." At the same time, Yandex said that all the news is assembled automatically from media reports with a license, and their headlines and fragments are displayed in the top unchanged.

In July, a communication failure occurred between the government and the real authors of the initiative - in the relevant departments they did not know anything about the bill until it was submitted to the State Duma, says the “new” interlocutor, familiar with the course of discussions.

“In fact, Gorelkin’s law is the official position of the presidential administration. This is a way of blackmail to reduce the capitalization of the company and redeem for nothing, ”he says.

The appearance of such a bill is now quite logical, Telnova believes. “Back in 2012, a vector was set to take control of the Internet as the media, and this trend continues. And Yandex is the largest Internet corporation, which is still not in those hands. The struggle for Yandex is an attempt to monopolize the market in order to squeeze as much money from it as possible, ”Klimarev agrees.

On the other hand, in the hunt for Yandex there is an even more important motive.

Artificial intelligence was seriously interested in Russian political managers who are not interested in business components, but the technological potential of the IT platforms in domestic policy.

The main task of the domestic political unit of AP, which acted as the main “customer” of the Gorelkin bill is preparation for elections to the State Duma in 2021, says the source of “New”. “The point is not only to pick up the Yandex algorithms, but also to learn how to use them, which the Kremlin does not know how now. Moreover, in order for Yandex to work for the Kremlin in these elections, the issue with the purchase must be resolved before the end of this year, in extreme cases - at the beginning of the next one, ”he says.

The Presidential Administration is primarily interested in the possibilities of more effective targeting political advertising by the Cambridge Analytica model.

This technology allows you to create typological profiles of potential voters who have not yet decided on the candidate, and show them the necessary messages. Moreover, the data of the "Yandex" go beyond socio-demographic features, which work is not effective enough. With the help of more complex criteria, for example, you can manipulate the indicators of the turnout.

“To understand what kind of groups of people are, what kind of movie they are, what kind of music they listen to, which format of messages is suitable for them, the Kremlin needs a platform that already knows these people,” says the interlocutor of “New”. - There are not many such platforms in Russia. This is Mail.Ru and VKontakte, with which the Kremlin is already doing well. But Yandex in this regard is the best, first and smartest. ”

What will be with the investment climate and Russian hi-test, the presidential administration does not care.

Now on exchanges, mainly on the American NASDAQ, there are 40–45% of Yandex shares. “These are mainly large institutional investors, so if the bill is adopting the bill, prices for the action will reach up to $ 10, or even up to 5,” Klimarev is sure. Since the bill of Yandex, the NASDAQ shares has fallen by $ 10 - from $ 39 per share in July to $ 29 per share in October.

The President of the Moscow Partners investment group Evgeny Kogan agrees that the bill shall deal with the “fatal blow” “Yandex” and other companies whose shares are traded on foreign exchanges. The capitalization company can fall both in half and three times, the expert believes.

In his opinion, so far this law led to the fact that there was a mass sale of shares of Russian companies with non -residents of the shares of Russian companies. “As a result, this hit on capitalization, showed everyone again that our stock market has increased, extreme risks. Therefore, today any foreign investor will think whether it is worth acquiring Russian assets. Moreover, we hit the hands of not only foreigners, but also ourselves, ”the expert is sure.