Russian customs officers will work at Belarusian border

The Ministry of Economic Development of Russia insists on the implementation of the agreements on mutual protection of the Customs Union’s border.

The head of the institution Andrei Belousov claimed that behind the scenes of St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

This is how he suggested to solve the problem of the withdrawal of capital from Russia through fictitious import schemes from Customs Union countries, RBC reports.

“I do not think that any legal restrictions are needed here, because at the level of the Customs Union almost all the agreements have been signed. Organizational issues need to be solved, since the customs protection at the border of the Customs Union is not complete yet. It would be a big step forward if Russian customs officers were present along the whole Customs Union’s border, including the part that belongs to Kazakhstan and Belarus. For what I know, such agreements have been signed, but they still need to be implemented, Russian customs officers should serve at the outer border”, - the minister noted.

According to him, Customs Union’s member-states first of all need to arrange information exchange on the flow of goods.

We would remind that recently the Central Bank of Russia has published data, according to which the outflow of capital through fictitious import schemes from Customs Union countries accounted for $25 billion in 2012. The ‘Belarusian scheme’ provided for the outflow of around $15 billion. Its nature was that Russian residents transferred payments for foreign trade contracts, according to which the import of goods had been carried out from Belarus, and the payments were transferred to the accounts of sellers in foreign banks, located in foreign countries. It is impossible to check the possible fictitious character of such deals due to the absence of customs control at the borders of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Within the Customs Union, import to Russia is not registered by the means of cargo customs declarations (the validity and authenticity of which can be checked upon in Federal Customs Service’s database), but invoices, which are not a subject for customs control.

Photo: tlscustoms.ru