Russia threatens retaliation against companies that leave
Foreign companies, including energy companies, that are leaving Russia will be indicted by the government for pushing their Russian subsidiaries into "deliberate bankruptcy," which, under Russian law, includes criminal prosecutions for top managers , has Upstream reported on Friday, citing Russian Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov.
Under Russian law, deliberate bankruptcy with damages of more than 1.5 million Russian rubles ($ 13,300 as of March 4) carries criminal liability. If this procedure is to be avoided, the companies either leave Russia immediately or sell their shares to local subsidiaries. One wonders what the weight of criminal proceedings in Russia could be for companies based in other countries which, among other things, follow indications from their own governments.
Many international companies, including the oil majors, have announced that they would stop their involvement in Russian projects and Russian companies in recent days due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
BP was the first to announce that it would divest from Russia. Within days, many other Western oil majors followed suit.
BP said on Sunday it would sell its 20% stake in Russian giant Rosneft. BP CEO Bernard Looney stepped down from the board of Rosneft with immediate effect. The other BP-appointed director of Rosneft, former BP CEO Bob Dudley, also resigned from the board.
The next day BP, Shell also said it would abandon its equity partnerships with Gazprom entities, including the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, its 27.5% stake in the Sakhalin-II LNG plant, its stake in the 50% in Salym Petroleum Development and the Gydan energy company. Equinor of Norway has also decided to stop new investments in Russia and to start the process of exiting its Russian joint ventures. ExxonMobil halts operations at Sakhalin-1 and will not make new investments in Russia, the US supermajor said this week, deploring "Russian military action".
Glencore is reviewing all commercial activities in Russia, including holdings in En + and Rosneft, and has said it does not have an operational footprint in Russia, while its commercial exposure is not material to Glencore.
Trafigura immediately froze investments in Russia and is reviewing options relating to its stake in Vostok Oil in which it has no operational or managerial input.
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The article Russia threatens retaliation against companies that leave comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-russia-minaccia-ritorsioni-contro-le-societa-che-se-ne-vanno/ on Sun, 06 Mar 2022 08:00:40 +0000.