Nationalization of the property of foreign investors is like moving into the house of a neighbor who has gone abroad

Recently, the issue of nationalization of the property of foreign companies that have decided to suspend their business or completely leave the Russian market in connection with the military operation of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine has been actively discussed.

In his interview to Business FM Petersburg Egor Noskov, Managing Partner of the "Duvernoix Legal" law firm, told columnist Tatiana Kopylova whether this mechanism has sufficient legal grounds in the current "new" world.

Tatiana Kopylova: How do you assess the legal grounds for a possible nationalization of companies that announce the termination of work in Russia? What legal framework can the Russian authorities rely on?

Egor Noskov: For the last two weeks we have been living in a completely new reality, in some kind of parallel world, compared to the one in which we lived before. Therefore, if we talk about what legal mechanisms exist for the nationalization of the property of foreign investors who have decided to stop operating in Russia, then the mechanisms are exactly the same as if they moved into a neighbor's house if he went abroad. Such mechanisms did not exist two weeks ago. But I have no doubt that in the new reality the parliament will unanimously, just like the law on fakes, pass a law according to which something else can happen. In the new reality, this decision is probably correct and fair. If you look at history, of the countries that carried out large-scale nationalization of property in the 21st century, I was only in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe, by nationalizing the agricultural land of white farmers, has achieved great success and entered the Guinness Book of Records for the highest inflation in the world, which reached several billion percent a year.

Within the framework of the Zimbabwean reality, this was probably also a very correct and timely decision.

Tatiana Kopylova: What, in your opinion, could be legal responses from foreign companies whose property they want to nationalize in Russia?

Egor Noskov: It seems to me that we now live in a world in which there is no limit to hysteria on both sides. Of course, I do not share the initiatives of the Western world on how to punish Russia more painfully for what they think are wrong actions. But since we are faced with sanctions, which, apparently, the country's leadership did not count on in any way (blocking almost half of the Central Bank's reserves placed in foreign currencies, and in several at once, including in the Japanese yen), it is difficult to say, with what fantasy will now our foreign partners come up. I can assume that over the past two weeks they have shown considerable creativity, which, it seems to me, turned out to be completely unexpected for Russia.