The government standardizes the sale of state property under special conditions

The White House is simplifying the process of privatization of state property under special conditions – we are talking about so-called investment transactions with the acquirers of such assets. Now they are carried out “manually” according to government orders. The new design proposes to introduce a “semi-automatic mode” – the procedural part will be the same for all transactions, but the government’s decision on each of them will be made with the participation of the Ministry of Finance, the Federal Property Management Agency and the Federal Antimonopoly Service. Until now, only about a dozen such transactions have been carried out; the current introduction of uniform rules could be required to scale the practice and the emergence of assets suitable for this, including those belonging to foreign companies leaving the Russian Federation.

The government, by decree of February 22, established rules for the alienation of federal property to attract investment, modernization and technological development of the economy. We are talking about investment transactions for the sale of property, which are now carried out according to separate government decisions. As the head of the privatization department of the Russian Auction House (RAD, the key trading platform for the sale of state property) Grigory Nachinkin explains, such transactions are excluded from the law on the privatization of state and municipal property and the procedure for their implementation was contained in separate government decisions each time.

The document unifies the procedure: government agencies prepare proposals for investment transactions for federally owned assets, send proposals to the Ministry of Finance, the Federal Property Management Agency and the Federal Antimonopoly Service, which assess the feasibility of the transaction and submit the draft decision to the government. His decision will already indicate the method and terms of alienation, the procedure for determining the price, etc. There are four ways to alienate property: at open or closed auctions in the form of an electronic auction; without bidding, but on the terms of instructions from the president, prime minister and relevant deputy prime minister (currently Dmitry Grigorenko); by contributing property to the authorized capital; through a public offering of shares. Failure to comply with the terms of the investment transaction may result in fines, termination of the contract, return of property or its seizure in court.

The RAD explains that the objects of transactions, as a rule, were 100% shares in state-owned companies, while the investor-buyer had to fulfill a number of conditions to maintain the profile of the activity and to develop it. As a result of such transactions, the state receives income from the sale of company shares and obliges investors to modernize capacities, increase market share, retain staff, etc. In total, about a dozen such transactions were concluded on behalf of the government by professional agents and the Federal Property Management Agency (for example, the sale JSC “Sibgiprobum”, JSC “Children’s Literature”).

The head of the atLegal department, Vadim Reznichenko, explains that significant objects remain outside the perimeter of the privatization law – for example, natural resources and foreign state property. According to Anton Zykov, partner of the tax and legal department of the DRT company, the opportunity to sell state property by special resolution was used in exceptional cases: when selling shares of certain gas industry companies that remained in federal ownership to Gazprom, when transferring shares of Inter RAO UES to the balance sheet of Rosneftegaz. . “More detailed regulation was most likely needed to apply the mechanism more often and ensure uniformity of its use,” the expert believes.

The need for uniform rules can be explained by the emergence of new assets on the state’s balance sheet – we recall that the redistribution of property is currently ongoing against the backdrop of sanctions and the departure of foreign companies from the Russian Federation. In particular, Vladimir Putin’s decree regarding the financial and oil and gas sectors was published yesterday – the government commission on foreign investment was empowered to give the president recommendations on transactions with shares of Russian companies owned by “unfriendly” non-residents.

Diana Galieva