The court seized the property of an IKEA subsidiary
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The court arrested the property of one of IKEA’s subsidiaries for almost 13 billion rubles. We are talking about the Torg company, which previously tried to transfer this amount to another company associated with the Swedish retailer – the Irish Fami Ltd. Earlier, Kommersant wrote that the Federal Tax Service could consider this a withdrawal of assets, and decided to return the funds to Russia in order to collect them against tax debts. The seized funds will go to the state budget. An exception is made only for employee salaries, follows from the court ruling.
According to a Torg representative, the company intends to resolve the dispute with the Federal Tax Service peacefully. As Kommersant learned, IKEA has already sent a corresponding proposal to the head of the tax service. The parties can still come to an agreement, says Ekaterina Boldinova, partner, head of tax practice at Five Stones Consulting: “Usually, when it comes to the peaceful resolution of such a conflict, this, of course, is the conclusion of a settlement agreement.
In it, the parties admit that the opponent is right and agree to pay the amounts established in the agreement to the budget. It is possible to establish some kind of flexible schedule for paying additional amounts assessed by the tax service. Accordingly, the company will pay, but evenly over a period of time, usually two to three years.”
For nine months of 2023, as indicated in the statement of the Federal Tax Service, the Torg company received a loss of almost 1.5 billion rubles, reduced its staff, sold vehicles, and in fact the organization’s business was discontinued. At the same time, she still had unpaid taxes. Therefore, the state, including through the arbitration court, is trying to get maximum funds from the company, says Sergei Varlamov, partner of the Delovoy Farvater law office: “From what we see in official documents, the payment to the Torg company for 13 billion rubles. to an Irish company.
The story that they paid for other transactions or that other contractors paid for, for example, the remaining IKEA goods is just speculation. A statement of claim has been filed against the Torg organization by both the Federal Tax Service and the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, taking into account the geopolitical situation in the country, we can say that the organization’s prospects are quite dismal; most likely, the state will win in the legal dispute.”
The Ingka Group, which owns the Torg company, is the largest owner of retail real estate in Russia. The total area of the shopping centers it owns is 2.3 million square meters. m, rental area – 1.8 million sq. m. m, follows from the data of Infoline-Analytics. Among them are shopping centers and hypermarkets in which IKEA stores operated. Rental income from Ingka Centers in Russia, according to Forbes, amounted to $350 million based on the results of 2021. IKEA suspended operations in the country in the spring of 2022; in March 2023, the Swedish company sold its last factory in Novgorod. But this winter, according to Rospatent, the retailer extended the registration of the trademark in Russia until 2033.
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