The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation filed lawsuits for the nationalization of 180 companies

During the two years of the war, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia filed 40 lawsuits in court to seize more than 180 companies in favor of the state. This is stated in a joint investigation by “Novaya Gazeta Evropa” and “Transparency International — Russia”.

The authors analyzed information about claims from the SPARK system and from the database of court decisions and found that the total assets of the companies whose assets are planned to be seized amount to about 1.04 trillion rubles. This is about 0.6% of Russia’s GDP over the past hour.

Most of the lawsuits concerned military industrial complex and machine-building enterprises, the food and fishing industry, as well as ports and companies engaged in real estate and construction.

More than 20 lawsuits were satisfied at least in the first instance, the publication says.

Most often, the reason for seizure was illegal property ownership (20 cases) and violation of anti-corruption legislation (14 cases). In three cases, the reason was the financing of the Armed Forces. Some lawsuits have not been published or were classified, investigators say.

The number of lawsuits about nationalization increased sharply during the two years of the war: in 2020 and 2021, the Prosecutor General’s Office filed three lawsuits each.

After the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine and the introduction of sanctions in Russia, legislation was tightened. In particular, in 2022, a decree was passed prohibiting transactions with shares of foreigners in strategically important enterprises, primarily TEK. It is possible to carry out such transactions only with the permission of the president.

In 2023, a decree was signed on the temporary external management of some assets with foreign participation, and a decision was also made on a mandatory discount of 50% when selling Russian assets of foreigners and an additional contribution to the budget in the amount of 15%.

The decree, which allowed to temporarily control the assets of companies or individuals from unfriendly states, actually led to their nationalization. For example, the generating companies “Fortum” and “Unipro”, owned by the Finnish Fortum and the German Uniper, came under the temporary control of Rosimushchestvo. In 2023, 100% of the assets of the “Baltika” brewing company, 98% of which belonged to Carlsberg, and 100% of the Russian business of Danone were handed over to Rosymuschestva.