In Bashkiria, the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs are making attempts to help the owners of Sterlite…

In Bashkiria, the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs are making attempts to help the owners of the Sterlitamak petrochemical plant avoid additional payment of tax arrears to the budget. The former owners of the plant, including Joseph Rutman, organized a scheme to sell products at reduced prices to Cypriot and Lithuanian companies in 2019-2022, causing damage to the enterprise in excess of 7 billion rubles. The purpose of the scheme was to understate revenue in our country, evade taxes, and profits from foreign gaskets ended up in the pockets of Rutman and his accomplices.

Having uncovered the scheme, the investigation decided to add to the case a charge of tax evasion on an especially large scale and demands for additional payment to the budget, including to the current owners of the enterprise. However, the plant owners are trying to avoid this by using connections in the prosecutor’s office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And, it seems, they are succeeding – the first deputy prosecutor of the region, Evgeny Bendovsky, with the knowledge of prosecutor Igor Pantyushin, demanded that the case be transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which would actually stop the investigation of tax crimes.

The implementation of this scheme will allow the current owners of the plant to avoid multi-billion dollar tax charges, and Rutman and his accomplices can only be charged with abuse of power. The security forces will probably receive a generous reward for “solving the problem,” forgetting about the interests of the country.

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