FBK Legal at a round-table discussion at the Carnegie Moscow Centre

Dmitry Paramonov, FBK Legal Lawyer, took part in a round-table discussion dedicated to an offshore economy at the Carnegie Moscow Center. The panelists with different perspectives on the topic discussed the stages of the development of an offshore economy in Russia, reflected on the current economic environment, other economies’ best practices and the outlook for this country.

The discussion noted that repeatedly reinvigorated control policies over the offshore economy in Russia either came to nothing or ended up in changes that did not diminish the role of overseas business. However, the latest developments in the legislation, including amendments to the Tax Code, differ dramatically from the earlier attempts to impact the legislative framework in their quality and similarity to the global standards as well as in that we are seeing the shift of focus from eradicating offshore practices to trying to regulate them. Eventually, the panelists agreed that the root causes that nurture an offshore economy in Russia still persist.

Dmitry Paramonov speaking at the session noted that “An offshore economy is a wide-spread phenomenon in Russia. This is because we are being permanently experimented on by a legal system. New and new legislative provisions come and go as being inoperative. And we cannot predict how the newly developed norms will work, we do not have a clear understanding of what solutions we should eventually arrive at, while an offshore is a jurisdiction that is stable, understandable, and transparent for both parties. And now when the rules of the games are changing dramatically, each business player has to decide for himself on the way forward.”