OREANDA-NEWS The Ministry of Finance is ready to exclude the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from the blacklist of offshore companies after Moscow and Abu Dhabi revise the agreement on avoidance of double taxation, on which there are controversial issues, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Sazanov answered a question from Forbes at the VII Moscow Financial Forum.

"If the agreement is [revised], work will follow on the list of offshore companies. The very existence of the agreement means that the reasons for which the country was included in the list of offshore companies are in the past," Sazanov said. According to him, the parties have to agree on "two or three issues", but they are all fundamental and important.

As Forbes explains, the UAE remains one of the few friendly countries on the black list of offshore companies of the Ministry of Finance. Companies with structures in states from this list cannot count on government subsidies and some tax benefits in Russia. At the same time, more than three thousand Russian companies have a legal entity in the United Arab Emirates.

Earlier, Bloomberg reported that Russian billionaires, under pressure from the authorities, began to "repatriate their wealth" — since the beginning of the military conflict in Ukraine, businesses have re-registered assets of at least $ 50 billion from Europe to Russia.

As Bloomberg notes, the transfer of assets is largely due to a change in tax policy. So, according to them, the agreement on the avoidance of the double taxation mechanism was suspended by the Russian authorities just so that it would become impractical for business to remain in unfriendly jurisdictions, such as Europe. In addition, the Russian authorities have made it difficult for companies to pay dividends or sell assets to organizations registered in such jurisdictions.