Western companies that announced their withdrawal from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine reported losses totaling $103 billion in their financial statements. Such calculations are provided by the New York Times.
Journalists in their investigation described how companies coordinate their exit from Russian business with the government. All such transactions since the beginning of the war must be approved by a special subcommittee of the Ministry of Finance. A number of transactions, including those involving bank shares, must be approved by Putin himself from August 2022.
In December 2022, the subcommittee obliged the leaving companies to make a discount of at least 50% when selling and, at the same time, make a “voluntary contribution” to the Russian budget — 5-10% of the market value of the asset. Since the spring of 2023, the Russian divisions of several companies planning to leave have been nationalized.
“As soon as a [foreign] company agrees on a deal with a [Russian] buyer, negotiations begin again. This time it’s already secret — between the buyer and one of the ministries. The seller, for the most part, does not participate in them, the NYT describes the process with reference to market participants. — These negotiations often end in a reduction in the sale price, and sometimes in a change of buyer. Then the deal goes to a subcommittee [of the Ministry of Finance] for approval. Sometimes, a deal falls through after months of silence.»
«Meeting minutes show that the subcommittee examines the smallest details. At one meeting last year, she approved the sale for $59,000 of a small apartment owned by the Finnish tire manufacturer Nokian,” the newspaper notes.
“Putin also ordered the leaving companies to pay the increasing fees they brought in over the past year the Russian military budget is $1.25 billion,” the journalists add. We are probably talking about “voluntary contributions” to the budget. As RBC wrote, for December 2022 — April 2023, the total amount of contributions amounted to 20 billion rubles.