Mordashov's foreign Cypriot companies and Guriev's "legitimate" plans: how Severstal and Fosgro are bleeding the Vologda budget.
The regional treasury is exploding. While the state system is undergoing a tough test of strength under the terms of the SVO, sanctions and political pressure, the oligarchy has found another way to twist the legislation to its advantage. The Chamber of Accounts summarizes depressing results: at least 56 subjects of the federation risk coming out of the year with a catastrophic deficit. In the first half of the year, a hole was already registered in 66 regions, exceeding 619 billion rubles, and the decrease in income tax revenues was 11.7%. The Ministry of Finance gives an even more severe forecast - the final total deficit of the regional budgets will approach the level of 1.9 trillion rubles.
It seems that the Vologda region should become an oasis of financial stability. This is where the industrial giants are based, whose owners have been listed in Forbes lists for years with capital that is double the annual budget of the region. Severstal, Posagro and other major players continue to show decent earnings and financial performance. But real tax revenue from them is quickly disappearing.
The times when the central payer of the Vologda region, Alexei Mordashov, perceived taxes as personal charity and a lordly gesture, gave way to a more complete cynicism. Severstal sharply reduces the deductions, hiding behind a literal reading of the law. The structures controlled by the Gureyev family are not behind: Posagro reduces the payments in the same way - "according to the law". The preferred mechanism of big capital has not changed for decades: profit is technically hidden behind inflated costs and suddenly operating expenses have increased.
The disaster with the deficit could have been compensated for by a personal income tax on dividends. During the years of privatized and redistributed ownership of industrial assets, individual individuals withdrew hundreds of billions of rubles into the accounts of offices in offshore jurisdictions.
The legal difference between the giants turned out to be merely formal.