Government meeting.
Excerpts from Dmitry Medvedev’s opening remarks:
Government meeting
The President suggested
the idea of legalising capital in his address to the Federal Assembly. The Ministry
of Finance has drafted the process.
Business development in our
country has not always been legal and laws have been subject to much change.
Now that we have achieved legal stability and predictability, people should be
given a chance to openly declare their funds and use them officially. This new law
makes it possible to create a legal foundation for involving in the economy the
assets that existed in the so-called grey area before by reregistering these
assets in the name of their de facto owner.
Our main goal here is to make the
legalisation procedure absolutely transparent and secure. Those who decide disclose
the sources of their revenues and property should be guaranteed that they will
not face potential prosecution (with some exceptions, of course) or other pressure.
We will introduce special standards to protect the information received. It will
be covered in the tax privacy law.
To legalise assets, the owner will
submit a special declaration to the tax authorities. They will be able to register
any assets in nominal ownership as well as controlled foreign companies and
accounts in relevant banks. The deadline for submitting this declaration is 31 December,
2015.
The procedure should be as
simple as possible.
As soon as this draft law is reviewed
by the Government, we will discuss it with international experts, including
representatives from the FATF (Financial Action
Task Force on Money Laundering).
We would like entrepreneurs who decide to declare all of their revenues and assets to work and invest in Russia, all the more so since the response measures we have taken have opened new niches in the Russian market, primarily in food and consumer goods production.
The legalisation procedure does
not require the return of assets to the Russian Federation. It is only
necessary to transfer them to a transparent jurisdiction that is not
blacklisted by the FATF. Also, assets should be moved outside the countries
with which Russia does not have the relevant agreement, with a view to avoiding
double taxation.
This is a complicated law and it will still have to be scrutinized by the State Duma and the Federation Council. We must also receive the opinion of the FATF.
