Business
Capital outflow from Russia doubles since beginning of 2019, exceeds $ 18 billion
By Crime Russia 12/3/19
Mar 13, 2019 - 3:04:41 PM

According to expert estimates, for all the years, about $ 3 trillion could be exported abroad.

The net outflow of private sector capital from Russia in January-February 2019 amounted to $ 18.6 billion, which is 2.1 times more than the figure for the same period last year – $ 8.7 billion, the Russian Central Bank reports. According to Bloomberg’s estimates, over the past 25 years, about $ 750 billion have been taken out to offshore jurisdictions from Russia. Calculations of the MGIMO professor Valentin Katasonov show that about $ 3 trillion were withdrawn from the country since the collapse of the USSR.

“Once a year I calculate the scale of the robbery from Russia over the previous ten years. And for the calculations, I use not only the payments balance, which are called “net private capital outflows,” but also others indicators,” Katasonov explained to the portal Vesti.Economika.

According to Katasonov, Russia “is not inferior to Kuwait or Saudi Arabia in terms of wealth per capita,” but the government and the Central Bank impose new taxes on citizens instead of “returning the stolen, imposing control over the export of capital from Russia and introducing a progressive tax scale.”

The policy of the Russian Government “aims to protect the interests of the ruling class,” the associate professor of Plekhanov’s REU, Candidate of Economic Sciences Oleg Komolov says