On 31/03/2023 the principle of L&P spoke to the audience of the economics news program of RUSSIA-24 about difficulties that major foreign companies and banks face while contemplating the sale of their businesses in Russia. According to Alexander Linnikov, generally the sale of a business to a Russian person of entity, not subject to foreign sanctions, does not conflict with the EU, UK or US sanctions regimes. However, pursuant to the most recent legislation, such transactions are conditioned by a mandatory contribution of up to 10% of the purchase price to the budget of the Russian Federation — a state currently under blocking sanctions. Therefore, such actions performed without prior authorization (license) of the financial supervision authorities of states that imposed restructure measures on Russia, for instance, the US OFAC, may be qualified as failure to comply with or even deliberate circumvention of sanctions. As a consequence, substantial liability risks arise for the parties to the transaction that fail to secure consent of their competent national regulators for disbursements in favor of the Russian government, including the risk of criminal persecution of corporate officers.
