The Federal Tax Service filed a lawsuit against IKEA
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Swedish IKEA, which announced its withdrawal from the Russian market in 2022, still has assets in the country. We are talking about a large warehouse complex in Yesipovo, near Moscow. The Federal Tax Service (FTS) has claims against the company managing this facility, demanding that it repay 12.9 billion rubles through the court. Lawyers suggest that the demands could be related not to the activities of the warehouse facility itself, but to other “subsidiaries” of the Swedish retailer that are not even currently operating.
IN card index arbitration cases On January 30, 2024, a claim by the tax inspectorate was registered, demanding 12.9 billion rubles. with Ikea Torg LLC, one of IKEA’s subsidiaries in the Russian Federation. Details of the claim have not yet been provided. The Federal Tax Service did not respond to Kommersant’s request. Ingka (which managed IKEA’s assets, including Mega shopping centers in the Russian Federation) was unable to comment on the substance.
Despite statements about the complete withdrawal from Russia in 2022 and the subsequent sale of IKEA production sites and Mega shopping centers, the Swedish company still has assets in the country. For example, on the balance sheet of Ikea Torg, to which the tax authorities have claims, there is an IKEA distribution center with a total area of about 180 thousand square meters. m in Yesipovo near Moscow, I discovered “Kommersant” in the Unified State Register of Real Estate data. Previously, authorities in the Moscow region stated that this facility provided the needs of retail outlets and the retailer’s online store. Construction of the facility has been carried out in parts since 2003 and was completed in 2019.
Potentially, the tax authorities’ claims may be related not to the activities of Ikea Torg itself, but to an audit of another, perhaps not currently operating, subsidiary of the retailer in Russia, Alexander Grinko, leader of the tax dispute resolution practice of Marillion Group, does not rule out.
He clarifies that the Tax Code in a number of cases allows tax authorities to collect debts from interdependent companies in court. The ultimate beneficiary of Ikea Torg is a non-resident, who theoretically could use various schemes to transfer funds abroad in the form of loans, dividends, overstatement of non-operating expenses, which probably caused claims from the tax authorities, Yulia Korneva, senior lawyer of the tax practice of K&P Group, gives her version .
Two Kommersant sources in the real estate market say that the IKEA structure does not want to sell its warehouse in Yesipovo, although there were applicants for the asset back in December 2023. “Ikea Torg” is ready to rent out the property for up to three years, but there were no interested parties for such a short time, Kommersant’s interlocutors note.
At the same time, as Kommersant discovered, at the beginning of 2023, Yandex Market posted vacancies for storekeepers and technical support specialists with a place of work at a distribution center in Yesipovo.
But Yandex Market claims that the marketplace does not rent premises from Ikea Torg. They added that in 2023, Yandex Market extended the agreement for the sale of remaining IKEA goods on its site. At the same time, the goods transferred under the terms of the agreement are located in the warehouses of the marketplace, the company clarified. In November 2022, Yandex Market agreed to purchase all remaining IKEA products in Russia.
According to a Kommersant source, the entire facility in Esipovo is valued at more than 34 billion rubles. Most likely, the IKEA structure understands that selling such a project profitably and quickly will be problematic, says Alexander Perfilyev, commercial director of the Dmitrov Logistics Park.
In general, there is an acute shortage of available space in the warehouse real estate market, so Ikea Torg could find both buyers and tenants for a long term – more than ten years, says Anton Alyabyev, head of the warehouse and industrial real estate department at CORE.XP.
Alexander Perfilyev points out that the IKEA warehouse complex is high-tech, has unique characteristics and European equipment, which can hardly be sold separately from the warehouse at market value. According to the expert, buyers of factories where furniture was produced may be interested in this asset.
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