Vedomosti: "To Close All the Loopholes"
More approvals will be needed for deals to buy strategic industries
By Dmitry Kazmin
"The gaps that allow economic agents to dodge the law and avoid getting approvals for deals with strategic assets must be closed," Mr Putin told the Foreign Investment Commission. The amendments to the law will be developed by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), which prepares the companies' applications for examination by the Government Commission, FAS deputy head, Andrei Tsyganov, told Vedomosti.
The FAS might have the right to summon additional documents from the investor, for example, to find out who the company's ultimate beneficiaries are. "At present we can only ask for these materials".
The approval procedure will take longer; officials have no time to check all the data as it is, says the manager of a foreign company which is going through an approval procedure for the purchase of a strategic asset. The right of the FAS to request additional documents may be used to extend the three-month period during which the FAS is obliged to prepare all the documents, he believes. According to Mr Tsyganov, the FAS is going to limit the period during which other agencies must approve the applications in order to speed up the whole procedure.
Another amendment would eliminate linguistic inaccuracies that make it possible to circumvent the law, Mr Tsyganov said. These inaccuracies are currently being identified. The law does not cover the purchase by a Russian subsidiary of a foreign company of a license to engage in strategic activities.
Yury Bortnikov of Vegas-Lex cites this as an example of such a loophole: the FAS has been urging the need to introduce amendments to the licensing law that would make Government approval of such purchases mandatory.
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A lot of work to do
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that about 45 applications from foreign investors have been recently filed. As of yesterday only two of them have been approved.
