Top officials in Russia have raised concerns about Kremlin moves to nationalize companies and an overheated economy in rare rebukes of Vladimir Putin's economic policy.
On Tuesday, Herman Gref, the CEO of Russia's largest bank, Sberbank, warned about the negative effects of high state spending on the military to fund the war in Ukraine. "Our economy is definitely overheated," Gref told the Federation Council, Russia's upper house, on Tuesday, according to the Tass news agency.
The next day, questions were raised about a Kremlin policy of forced nationalizations since the start of Putin's full-scale invasion, which has been followed by many foreign companies leaving the country. In the first two years of the war, 180 private companies have come under state control as of March 2024, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe, a Latvia-based independent Russian newspaper.
Newsweek has contacted the Russian Finance Ministry for comment.
In May, a court ordered the assets of pasta manufacturer Makfa Group to be handed the Russian state. In December 2023, a majority stake in strategic metals firm Solikamsk Magnesium Plant was transferred from its private owners to the state's nuclear energy company.
Head of Russia's Central Bank Elvira Nabiullina, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov discussed these moves at the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) held in Putin's home city as Russia's answer to the Davos talking shop for the rich.
In a session described by The Bell, an independent online newspaper in Russia, as "one of the few remaining events of the forum that is still worth following," the moderator Andrei Makarov, who chairs the Duma's budget and taxes committee, asked about "investor confidence in the current state of institutions."
"What crazy person would buy shares if he knows that he is buying them from someone they have just been taken away from?" Makarov said, according to The Bell.
Siluanov replied that the state was not going to keep the assets that were taken from the owners, but rather would sell them.
However, Nabiullina said that the more serious issue was "that they were seized from bona fide purchasers at organized auctions," according to independent news outlet Agentstvo. "After that, we can't expect people to buy shares in organized trading," Nabiullina added.
She said that the Central Bank had filed a lawsuit to protect minority shareholders, which Agentstvo noted probably referred to an appeal against the seizure of shares of minority shareholders of Solikamsk Magnesium Plant.
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Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London, UK. His focus is Russia and Ukraine, in particular ... Read more
