Anastasia Pechenyuk16:13, 15.06.23

The new order will make it even more difficult for Western businesses to leave the Russian Federation.

Last week, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin sent a secret decree to the government instructing him to prepare a law that would allow the appropriation of Western assets , writes the Financial Times , citing sources and the text of the document.

The law should provide that the Russian state gets the priority right to buy any Western assets for sale at a “significant discount”. Legal entities that buy Western assets in the Russian Federation, according to the new law, will have to be wholly owned by Russia (it is allowed that they are in the process of excluding all foreign investors). Such an order will make it even more difficult for Western businesses to leave the country.

Insiders say the idea behind Putin’s economic team is to make the threat of nationalization part of the “carrot and stick” method: Western countries that seize Russian assets will be punished, while those who play by the Kremlin’s rules will be rewarded.

Western businessmen are confident that “nationalization is inevitable and it’s only a matter of time.” One of the businessmen who are about to leave the Russian market soon is sure that the nationalization will hurt the raw materials business the most, and technology companies the least.

“Usually the state doesn’t want investors to leave. But they (the Russians – UNIAN) want to encourage good behaviour,” said one of the Western businessmen working in Moscow.

FT sources say that Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Russian Central Bank, and Anton Siluanov, Minister of Finance, are active supporters of restrictions on the exit of Western corporations. The central bank could weaken the ruble due to the outflow of foreign capital, and the minister sees this as a way to boost budget revenues, the deficit of which amid the war reached $42 billion.

(C)UNIAN 2023