Special administrative regions are a very important topic and a very important set of laws that has been adopted. Unfortunately, we aren’t seeing any queues yet. We have a bill prepared by the Ministry of Economic Development that I think is in the government and has very good provisions, in particular, a provision on controlling entities and the invariability of the equity interest and many other things that need to be corrected. But, unfortunately, it’s still in the government and hasn’t been sent to the Duma. It’s essential […] to adjust our national legislation and provide the possibility to preserve the validity of the legislative norms and corporate governance rules of the states from which the resident moved. It seems to be spelled out, but it doesn’t fully work [...] We need to think about how to modernize [legislation] as much as possible for those companies that are ready to relocate, so that it does not constrain the adoption of the appropriate decisions — Nikolay Zhuravlev, Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation.
Special administrative regions have also been earning, albeit not a huge amount, but, nevertheless, a noticeable one. During this period, a total of RUB 790 million has made its way into the budgetary system of the Russian Federation, of which I think RUB 276 million is our interregional budget, i.e., about 35%. And, of course, we are very pleased with this fact [...] Several iterations of amendments to this law on special administrative regions have already been introduced, and it’s actually being adopted very promptly due to [...] a number of sanctions-related decisions from the United States and other states. But after that, of course, it has been seriously revised, improved, and modernized, and this has produced results — Anton Alikhanov, Acting Governor of Kaliningrad Region.
In my view, the most important thing here is the legal framework, corporate law, and the ability to use foreign instruments and the currency component [...] Can we reach a compromise here at all? Because for a business that operates in a foreign jurisdiction and would like to get all of the same or most of those things that it has abroad, we need to actually create some kind of not just a tax or economic zone for them, but basically some kind of extraterritorial entity that would correlate very little with the Russian legal system, which, of course, is impossible […] A conditionally successful option can be seen in this, but there is no compromise option. Of course, it’s fraught with certain restrictions, which is why the tool is at a disadvantage for purely doing business elsewhere — Pavel Kolomensky, First Deputy Chairman of the Russian Union of Industrialistsand Entrepreneurs Tax Policy Committee.
It seems to me that the form in which legislation [on special administrative regions] will emerge, God willing, will have the amendments that have already been announced in the press [...] And, of course, I think that the legislation is really stabilizing — Aleksandr Shenderyuk-Zhidkov, Director, Sodruzhestvo .
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