The Federal Tax Service has suspended operations on the accounts of Telesport Group JSC

A number of banks, including Dom.rf, Sovcombank, MKB, Promsvyazbank, Sberbank and Tinkoff, suspended operations on the accounts of Russia’s largest sports marketing operator, Telesport Group JSC. This was done at the request of the Federal Tax Service: the company owes the service 115.77 million rubles. Telesport Group will not be able to open a parallel account in another bank, lawyers say, it will be immediately blocked. Market participants believe that while the company is solving problems, some of its positions may be taken by other players, including Match TV, Yandex and Okko.

The Federal Tax Service has suspended operations on the accounts of Telesport Group JSC (operator of the sports marketing market), as follows from SPARK-Interfax data. The changes are dated March 7. Operations were frozen by Dom.rf, Sovcombank, MKB, OTP Bank, Promsvyazbank, Rosselkhozbank-TsKB, Sberbank and Tinkoff. A source in the financial market notes that “the banks acted on the decision of the Federal Tax Service in connection with non-payment of taxes.” Judging by the certificate from Kontur-Focus, the negative balance on the single tax account of Telesport Group is 115.77 million rubles. The banks, the Federal Tax Service and the company itself did not answer Kommersant.

Telesport Group JSC and Petr Makarenko are involved in a number of legal proceedings. Thus, due to a violation of the contract for the provision of broadcasts of matches of the 2024 European Football Championship, a lawsuit was filed against the company by the online cinema Okko. The beneficiary of the streaming, Sergei Shishkin, also filed a lawsuit against Mr. Makarenko in December 2023, demanding to exclude the latter from the shareholders of Telesport Group JSC and to recover damages in the amount of 1.8 billion rubles. The company lost the case against Channel One: the broadcaster sued for almost 0.5 billion rubles. The Federal Tax Service demands that one of the JSC’s subsidiaries, Telesport Media LLC, be declared bankrupt (see Kommersant of March 7).

Victoria Kanishevskaya, head of tax practice at K&P Group, notes that under Art. 76 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, in a number of cases, tax authorities have the right to suspend expenses on bank accounts of organizations and individual entrepreneurs. “This is a measure aimed at ensuring the fulfillment of tax obligations. It is used in cases provided for in Art. 76 and paragraph 10 of Art. 101 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation,” explains Kira Gin, managing partner of the law firm “Gin and Partners”. Moreover, judicial acts are not required to block accounts by decision of the Federal Tax Service, explains Ms. Kanishevskaya.

“There is no ban on opening an account in another bank, but from the moment a new account is opened, it will also be subject to blocking (ban on expense transactions) in accordance with clause 12 of Art. 76 of the Tax Code, so it doesn’t make sense,” explains Victoria Kanishevskaya. Moreover, such actions on the part of the company are risky, warns Kira Gin, since “Art. 199.2 of the Criminal Code provides for criminal liability for concealing funds or property of an organization, at the expense of which arrears of taxes should be collected.”

The procedure for blocking accounts implies that the company cannot pay contractors, explains Kommersant’s interlocutor on the media market: “Another question is that no one knows exactly how many legal entities Pyotr Makarenko has registered, and this is difficult to verify.” “For a company of this size, solving problems with the tax authorities should not be difficult,” believes Kommersant’s interlocutor in the media market. But while Telesport Group’s accounts are frozen, some of its positions in the market may be taken by competitors, he adds: the purchase of sports rights in the Russian Federation is now being carried out, in particular, by Match TV, Yandex with the broadcast of three NHL seasons in the Russian Federation and Okko with matches of the English Premier League.

Yulia Yurasova, Anna Zanina, Olga Sherunkova