| Businessweek | - |
Even
before the Ukraine standoff, foreign companies in Russia say they were
alarmed by the number of executives being deported for minor
infractions.
Bloomberg News
Putin Deports Executives for Speeding as Sanctions Loom (1)
Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, in Seoul. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
Even before the Ukraine standoff,
foreign companies in Russia say they were alarmed by the number
of executives being deported for minor infractions. Now with the
West preparing sanctions, they’re bracing for more.
Almost 1,000 people from countries outside the former
Soviet Union have had their work visas revoked for committing
two or more “administrative violations” since the end of last
year, when the migration service and traffic police linked their
databases, according to immigration authorities. Such offenses
can be as minor as a parking ticket, smoking in prohibited areas
or even jaywalking. “Individuals have been stopped on the border for having two speeding tickets and told their visa is no longer any good,” said Alexis Rodzianko, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow, which promotes the interests of Exxon Mobil Corp., PepsiCo Inc. (PEP:US) and 800 other companies.
Before the Kremlin-backed president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was ousted last month, prompting President Vladimir Putin to pour troops into Crimea and prepare to annex the peninsula, officials said they were working with foreign businesses to resolve the deportation problem as quickly as possible. Now those talks have been shelved as lawmakers prepare legislation that would allow Russian authorities to seize assets of western companies in case of sanctions.
Airport Detention
One of the people caught up in the crackdown is Quentin O’Toole, Deloitte & Touche LLP’s local chief operating officer. When the New Zealander tried to return to Moscow from a trip abroad in December, he was detained at the airport and held in a cell overnight before being deported, according to two people familiar with the matter. The reason: speeding tickets.O’Toole didn’t even commit the offenses -- his wife did, while driving a car registered in his name, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Moscow’s automated traffic cameras issue tickets by license plate, rather than by driver. It took Deloitte’s lawyers six weeks to get O’Toole’s visa reinstated. O’Toole and Deloitte both declined to comment.
Even foreigners employed by prominent Russian enterprises have been deported. One executive of a mining company said he was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in mid-January along with his wife and children because his driver had racked up about $1,000 of speeding tickets.
Mayakovsky Theater
While his family was allowed into the country, he said he was denied a lawyer and held for 12 hours in a detention area with about 30 other people before being deported. His company eventually got the visa reinstated, the executive said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.Mindaugas Karbauskis, the Lithuanian artistic director of Moscow’s Mayakovsky Theater, said he was banned from Russia for a year when he tried to fly back in February. Karbauskis said on his Facebook Inc. page that he’d received five speeding tickets of about 300 rubles ($8) each, all paid. He was allowed back in only after his bosses at the storied theater intervened.
“We vouched for him,” said Olesya Vartanova, a spokeswoman for the theater, declining to be more specific.
Lawmakers who drafted the legislation in 2011 said at the time that stricter visa rules were needed to curb the number of illegal immigrants, which the government puts at 3.5 million. The vast majority of those come from poorer former Soviet states, according to the Federal Migration Service in Moscow.
Sanctions Threat
Like AmCham, the Association of European Business, which lobbies on behalf of European companies including BP Plc (BP/) and Siemens AG (SI:US), has warned its members about the risks of even minor legal infringements by foreign employees -- particularly since Russia’s takeover of Crimea, home to its Black Sea Fleet, evolved into the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War.“There is nothing immediately happening and the current political situation will possibly not accelerate providing a solution to the problem,” AEB Chief Executive Officer Frank Schauff said in a phone interview.
“It’s certainly a similar situation to the one we faced in 2008, when the EU threatened sanctions but didn’t implement them,” Schauff said, referring to Putin’s five-day war with Georgia. “The pressure is higher this time. Ukraine is a much bigger country and is more in the center of Europe.”
The migration service won’t comment on how the events in Ukraine are impacting the visa issue, according to Zalina Kornilova, a spokeswoman in Moscow.
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