Despite a record number of sanctions, Russia’s GDP growth in 2023 was 3.6%, one of the highest results in the last decade. But one of the most important conditions for the stable functioning of the economy is the legal protection of companies. And here a great responsibility falls on the prosecution. How does the legal framework affect the stability and predictability of business activity? What measures lead to reducing the excess administrative burden? What role can the prosecutor’s office play in creating comfortable business conditions? These issues were discussed during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in the session “Stability, predictability and transparency of business as factors of economic growth.” Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Igor Krasnov, Head of the Federal Tax Service (FTS) Daniil Egorov, Auditor of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation Svetlana Orlova, Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Federation from Russia, Alexey Khersontsev, and others shared their vision.
“THE SALESMAN SHOULD NOT BE AFRAID”
The session opened with a report from Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov, who quoted the words spoken more than 300 years ago by Peter the Great: “Commerce should not be frightened or discouraged by severity, but encouraged by affection.”
“Truly words of a great reformer and seer,” Igor Krasnov stressed. – After all, it was precisely this approach that formed the basis for the decision made by legislators in 2008 to give the supervisory agency powers to protect companies from illegal pressures. After more than a decade and a half, I can say with confidence that this area has become one of the key branches of tax supervision and has fully demonstrated its relevance.
On the initiative of prosecutors in the interests of business, last year alone more than 42 thousand legal acts issued in the Russian regions were in compliance with federal legislation.
– An important condition for the fulfillment of the tasks assigned by the President of Russia to protect the interests of business remains compliance with the established moratorium on inspections and, in relation to non-dangerous objects, a complete ban on their planning . In 2023, of the 250,000 inspections proposed by inspectors, prosecutors authorized less than a third. Basically, what is necessary to ensure the safety of citizens has been agreed upon,” said Igor Krasnov.
One of the threats that the Attorney General mentioned is the increasing number of risk indicators that various inspectors use as a basis for inspections.
“I have ordered prosecutors to fundamentally and firmly suppress his arbitrary and unfounded identification,” he said. – Appropriate response measures have already been adopted in more than sixty regions. For example, in the Sverdlovsk region, after our intervention, the number of indicators for regional control decreased by a third (from 92 to 62), and for municipal control – almost by half (from 2,015 to 1,217). In the Republic of Mordovia and the Jewish Autonomous Region, at the request of prosecutors, such implausible indicators as failure to respond to a warning were excluded from legal acts. Agree, with such a level of worldview, an unscheduled inspection can be, as they say, “absorbed out of thin air.” We have proposed that indicators be given the status of reasons for carrying out unscheduled inspections only in relation to objects classified as high or extremely high risk. In other cases, they should be used exclusively as preventive measures. I am convinced that when each indicator is transparent and understandable for companies, officials and citizens, it can be said with certainty that they have become an effective measure to protect the business community from unjustified interference.
The Attorney General supported the idea of exempting companies from liability when eliminating violations:
– It is planned to develop, in my opinion, a rather interesting and unique legal institution of an agreement on the exemption of an economic entity from administrative responsibility, provided that it independently eliminates previously committed violations.
WE ARE READY TO LISTEN AND HEAR YOU
“For the past two years, companies have lived practically without inspections,” recalled Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation Alexey Khersontsev. “This, of course, was guaranteed by the moratorium on inspections, introduced and expanded by order of the President to support our business under the pressure of sanctions and thanks to the principled position of the prosecutor’s office in guaranteeing this moratorium.
According to the deputy minister, in the last four years the scope of control has changed drastically. The most important thing is that large-scale digitization has been carried out, during which the Prosecutor General’s Office, together with the government, created a unified register of control activities. By the way, this spring a further modernization of the portal began, which will allow all entrepreneurs, without exception, if they do not agree with the issued orders, to appeal them electronically.
The auditor of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation, Svetlana Orlova, agrees that the growth of business activity and its contribution to the country’s economy is, among other things, the result of the reform of the control and supervision system . In her opinion, the measures taken made it possible to bring control and supervision to a new qualitative level.
– Last year, 1.2 million new companies in the field of small and medium-sized businesses were registered in Russia. This is the highest figure in the last five years. They have become full participants and provide significant domestic demand. They came to the market because there is trust in the authorities, in the structures, in the reforms that we are carrying out,” said Svetlana Orlova.
According to the auditor, it is very important that family businesses occupy an important niche in the country’s development today:
– The family business is today one of the most flexible and stable formats. Today, one in every two loaves of bread is made in family businesses.
At the end of the debate, Igor Krasnov once again assured that the prosecutor’s office will continue to protect responsible and conscientious companies.
– We are ready to listen to you and hear you. I’m not just talking about prosecutors. We work in a consolidated manner: Prosecutor’s Office, authorities and government. The most important thing in the work of prosecutors is to help and synchronize the work of companies and government agencies, solving problems that really exist on earth. There are many of them. Therefore, we still have a lot of work to do,” summarized the attorney general.
