Alexey Bogomolov: Russian business as a victim of intergovernmental disagreement of Russia and Ukraine

Three participants of the tender for sale 68,01 % shares of public corporation “Zaporozsky Aluminium Industrial Complex”, such as public corporations “Nikolayevsky Aluminous Factory”, “United Company “Siberian Aluminium” and “Bratsky Aluminium Factory” intend to refuse to take part in the competition in the near future. Start price of share holding was about 30 million dollars. “Nikolayevsky Aluminous Factory”, “United Company “Siberian Aluminium” and “Bratsky Aluminium Factory” were the most probable candidates for victory. The question is: what makes them turn down such an attractive offer? It is not a secret that the relationships between Russia and Ukraine are complicated by enormous debts of Ukraine: for example, Ukraine owes Gazprom more than 1,5 milliard dollars. The Ukrainian government even makes no secret of the fact that it intends to use the money gained from the sale of the shares to repay all the internal debts of this year. The other problem is that Ukraine has fallen into a habit to steal Russian gas. The recent meeting of presidents Putin and Kuchma didn’t help to change the relationship of two countries for best. Kuchma officially promised to control the situation. But the embezzlement is still in practice. Probably the dissatisfaction of the Kremlin authorities with Ukraine caused the a private prohibition to invest considerable sums of money in Ukrainian economy. In this case the political interests of Kremlin don’t correspond Russian businessmen interests, who suffered from intergovernmental disagreement.