Translated and captioned by Leo.

The attempt to sabotage the [Russian] President’s decision to pull the tail of offshore optimizers seems to be the work of the Ministry of Finance. The profile of the ministry, with the head of Anton Siluanov, has set back the actions of preventing withdrawal of dividends without taxation until the beginning of 2024. Which once again brings up the question about, “who do the Russian liberals in power work for?”

A very controversial decision was made at the end of July by the Ministry of Finance. I’ll remind you. Earlier, Vladimir Putin proposed to introduce a 15% tax on the output of dividends into offshore zones. And the government quickly went into a decisive action. For example, with the laws of the Republic of Cyprus, there was a letter about the change in their agreement for taxation. A few months went by with negotiations. Cypriots didn’t agree with terms, so as a result of this, Russia recently tore up the agreement in a one-sided manner. It would seem that everything is going according to the plan proposed by the President. But in light of the actions by the Ministry of Finance, it puts the question on the refusal of actually attaining the proposed goals for upcoming years.

Article title: “The Ministry of Finance Will Extend the Possibility of Withdrawing Dividends Abroad Without Taxes”. Businesses have lobbied for the transition period until 2024 to pay for the dividends offshore with a 0% tax under certain conditions. The Ministry of Finance wanted to completely close this loophole by the beginning of next year.

As RBK Group media reported in the Ministry of Finance: “The proposed bill was discussed with the involvement of the business community to develop an optimal mechanism for applying the benefits as for the state, and the same way for business, in order to prevent a sharp increase in the tax burden, following the discussion, a compromise decision was made on a transition period (before December 31, 2023) for the application of this long process and the need to comply with certain conditions for its retrieval. The amendments were submitted for consideration to the government.”

Am I the only one who sees that with the phrasing of these words, businesses lobbied for actions of criminal offense? I’ll remind you that it’s in the USA where lobbyism is legalized. But here [in Russia] it’s in fact called ‘corruption’. Maybe the Ministry of Finance’s press service will sound out the name of the company which influenced the official on the question about delaying the term in introducing the 15% tax on outsourced dividends? Which would allow our comrades from the FSB to visit these companies.

It looks like Russia’s liberal Minister of Finance completely confused which side of the ocean he’s supposed to be on. We know very well what happens with the output of money from Russia into offshore accounts with no taxes. For those who don’t know, it won’t be that hard to find out after reading on the aftermath of the accident in the Arctic. (Article featured in video: https://www.forbes.ru/obshchestvo-photogallery/402193-krupneyshaya-katastrofa-v-arktike-chto-izvestno-o-razlive-topliva) Which was caused by the ‘I don’t care’ attitude by the company leadership of Nornickel. This corporation exploits Russian natural resources and shareholders move them into the offshore accounts without paying any taxes. But if they had paid it, then the government could have used this money to make decisions themselves, without expecting responsibility from light clothes-wearing talk-managers to answer those same questions related to ecology. But for the Minister of Finance, the opinions of entrepreneurial networks are more important.

When it comes to buying out recent proposals by turning up the heat on privatization, it is characterized by this very Minister of Finance like the lackeys of major businesses:

Source: Lenta.ru – “From the period until 2025, the number of companies with state participation should be reduced 1.5 times to 961 enterprises, such figures are contained in the plan of activities of the Ministry of Finance of Russia for 2020 until 2025. The department is gathered to consistently fight against state participation in the economy. In 2020, the number of state companies should fall to 1465, in 2021 – down to 1319, in 2022 – down to 1187, in 2023 – down to 1068.”

Has there been not enough privatization frauds in Russia with their consequences? There were only a little amount of ‘effective owners’ that harmed our fellow citizens, like that same owner of the shopping center ‘Winter Cherry’ in Kemerovo. While sitting abroad and regularly receiving his rent money, he hired ‘effective managers’ which didn’t care about fire safety. Do we really need more effective bloodsuckers to cause accidents and death? Or maybe we need to get rid of the rotten liberals in the Ministry of Finance who are clearly serving not the government of the Russian society, but instead those same ‘effective owners’. Otherwise it’s looking like the Prime Minister changed, but the liberal path of independent ministries has remained unchanged:

Source: Lenta.ru – “In January, even before the resignation of Dmitry Medvedev’s government, the Ministry of Finance published forecasts for a privatization plan for 2020-2022. It mentioned within three years the sale of 86 federal unitary enterprises, 186 joint-stock companies, 1168 facilities and 13 shares of state participation in limited liability companies.”

I am personally against a written path, and I express my lack of trust in the Minister who pushes these kind of politics. If you agree with me, then I suggest you to spread this information on social media, demanding that we remove Anton Siluanov from the post of Minister of Finance. Enough already, he’s ruled long enough. Let the post become available to someone who will carry out the orders of the President of Russia, instead of sabotaging them.