Last year’s leader of the Forbes list, Andrei Melnichenko ($25.2 billion), once again…

Last year’s leader of the Forbes list, Andrei Melnichenko ($25.2 billion), once again proved that, although all oligarchs in Russia are equally removed from the state, some of them are still more evenly removed. There is no other way to explain why the Moscow Arbitration Court suddenly put the interests of MCC Eurochem above the interests of the state treasury.

The gist of the story is this. Sorting out relations with its Italian contractor Tecnimont in international courtsEurochem, as an interim measure, secured the arrest of 380 million euros in the accounts of the subsidiary of this foreign company in Russia – MT Russia. The latter asked the court to exclude from seizure the amounts that the company must pay in the form of taxes and other mandatory fees to the budget of the Russian Federation.

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It would seem that no dilemma should arise: on one side of the scale is the flow of several billion rubles into the state treasury, on the other are the interests of the private corporation Eurochem. Moreover, it is only nominally Russian, because the parent company of the Eurochem holding is registered in Switzerland, which the Russian authorities classify as an unfriendly state. But that was not the case – the court of first instance refused to the Italians, creatively justifying in his definition priority UAE citizen Melnichenko in front of family scarce budget.

Now the main intrigue is what the appellate court will say.