United Russia insists on nationalization of enterprises being shut down in Russia due to sanctions - party lawmaker

MOSCOW. March 9 (Interfax) - Organizations and enterprises that are being shut down in Russia due to sanctions imposed on the country should be nationalized, deputy head of the United Russia faction Andrei Isayev said.

"In the current situation, maintaining employment is one of the most important tasks, and in this regard I believe that the party should insist on implementing a proposal made by Secretary of the party's General Council Andrei Turchak to nationalize enterprises and organizations that have halted their operations in Russia due to sanctions," Isayev said at a United Russia urgent meeting to discuss measures to ensure socio-economic stability on Wednesday.

"We are talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs," taking into account related enterprises, the lawmaker said.

"There are all of the economic prerequisites required to implement this decision, and our people who have all of the required technologies are working there. Raw materials and necessary components, as a rule, are also being produced in the Russian Federation," Isayev said.

Besides, he believes that there are legal prerequisites for the implementation of this proposal, "because such shutdowns are, in fact, premeditated bankruptcy."

"There is a concept in Russian and international law: preventing more harm with lesser harm. Of course, we strike a blow to the property rights of these enterprises, but we thus prevent the harm that these organizations do to their employees, their clients, their suppliers and related companies," Isayev said.

The party should ask the government "in this case to provide an opportunity for all organizations that operate under a franchise agreement to break off that agreement on the most favorable terms possible."

"The government should use the right already given by us to ignore the patent law and the right to the intellectual property of this kind of organizations," the deputy also said.

As for those "enterprises that may experience temporary difficulties because they have been working with imported components or other imported products," Isayev suggests providing payday loans similar to those provided during the pandemic in 2020 as one of the measures.

"If there was the only criterion to retain 90% of jobs, then here we can put forward a second criterion to re-profile this organization, or to find other sources of replacing required components and raw materials as a condition for continuing work so that this loan would be repaid in full by the state," Isayev said.