The State Duma proposed to recognize foreign consulting companies as foreign agents

Foreign consulting companies must be recognized as undesirable organizations, and the structures they have created in Russia as foreign agents. About it informed Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy Artem Kiryanov, Izvestia writes.

“The expansion of sanctions is necessary so that it doesn’t turn out that de jure we have banned them, but they work, supposedly everything is Russian, they are not foreign at all. Therefore, such companies must be included in the list of organizations whose activities are recognized as undesirable in Russia, and any denominations in which they try to re-register their activities in the Russian Federation must be entered in the register of foreign agents,” he said.

According to Kiryanov, after the amendments to the law “On the Fundamentals of State Regulation of Trade Activities of the Russian Federation” were submitted to the State Duma, foreign research companies have already begun to look for “a loophole in the future law and even launched a fake re-registration process to formally comply with the proposed norms.” Kiryanov noted that Nielsen, GFK, IQVIA and IPSOS and others are among the companies that have already begun to look for ways to get around the future law.

He noted that the idea of ​​recognizing foreign consulting companies in Russia as foreign agents had already been proposed for amendment. Kiryanov stressed that “it is important to prevent and eliminate the threats of uncontrolled data collection of Russian citizens, and in fact ongoing economic espionage by Western research companies.”

At the end of July, a group of State Duma deputies contributed in the lower house of parliament, a bill to tighten requirements for foreign consulting companies. According to the document, at least 80% of the share capital of companies must belong to Russian owners. After the entry into force of the law, companies will have to enter data about themselves in a special list of the FAS. The decision on the ownership structure of the company will be made by a special commission. If this decision is not implemented, the court may decide on the forced sale of shares in the authorized capital of the company. At the same time, it will be prohibited to enter into contracts with companies that are not on the FAS list.