25 Jul 2022 09:17

Foreigners' obligations on special investment contracts can be transferred with legal entities to new owners from Russia

KAZAN. July 25 (Interfax) - Danish equipment manufacturer Vestas so far remains the only foreign investor to announce plans to terminate its special investment contract (SPIC) with the Russian authorities, and going forward there might be more of a transfer of SPIC obligations from foreigners to new Russian owners of the assets they are divesting, First Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Vasily Osmakov told reporters.

"Only Vestas, probably," he said, when asked how many foreign investors have announced they are pulling out of SPICs.

"All other companies are on pause in one way or another, and working more on reformatting special investment contracts, because the subjects of SPICs are, after all, Russian plants, Russian legal entities, with which corporate restructuring is taking place, transfer of management, transfer of ownership to others and so on," Osmakov said.

"We're talking more about the transfer of obligations on SPICs to new owners," he said.

"As for Vestas, we had an interesting discussion with them on the subject of the preferences that were granted under the SPIC. We'll see how our colleagues work this out," Osmakov said.

In June, within the context of Vestas's decision to terminate its SPIC, then Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov, who was promoted to deputy prime minister for industry trade in July, said that, in making the decision to pull out of a SPIC, investors should understand that they will have to reimburse the preferences they have already received under these contracts.

"One should keep in mind that, when a SPIC is terminated the government will take into account the preferences that the participant of the SPIC received in the period of the SPIC's implementation, the money will first have to be compensated to the budget," Manturov said, speaking to reporters at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June.