Comments on items ж) and з) of Art 14 of 62-FZ (continued)

Item ж)

Signed into effect on June 23rd, 2014 by President Vladimir Putin, this long awaited 'investor citizenship' amendment says that an Individual Entrepreneur (Rus. ИП) who has residence permit and turned not less than 10 mln rub / year during 3 year preceding to citizenship application is eligible to 'simplified procedure of naturalisation'. I’m Russian citizen, born in Soviet Union. I know my government a bit, and I was wondering «Where’s the catch?». The amendments were too good to be true. The revelation came 3+ months after the amendment was signed into the effect.

 

In September 30th, 2014 Russian Government's Decree #994 simply carved out every juicy business from this amendment. By decree #994 all real estate, retail, consulting, catering, advertising, hotels and some other business categories were excluded from those eligible for simplified naturalisation. If your business has even a single code of economic activity (Rus OKVED code) listed in the decree #994 - you’re not eligible.

Interestingly, the 'kill list' for Decree #994 was furnished by the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia - the one responsible for economic development.

Item з)

This amendment is supposed to make you eligible for simplified naturalisation in case you own not less than 10% in a company with registered charter capital of not less than 100 mln rub. And this company paid in taxes not less than 6 mln rub/year for not less than 3 years. However, the decree #994 emasculated it the same way it did Item ж). This alone makes this amendments ж) & з) significantly less attractive.

To make the picture complete: neither ж) nor з) amendments work at all, and never worked. And it doesn’t matter what kind of business you are in. Why so? Both Mrs. Kazakova and Mrs Perova refrained from comments. We got unofficial comment from some of their colleagues at FMS: «Only marriage is the right way to naturalisation».