Kiev political scientist explained why global business will be able to operate in Crimea
In France, a court verdict was issued against LafargeHolcim CEO Eric Olsen, whose company operated in Syrian territory controlled by the banned terrorist organization ISIS and paid millions of euros to local authorities.
This court decision is a precedent for companies that will operate in disputed territories, Ukrainian political scientist Sergei Belashko said on the YouTube channel “First Cossack,” a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“There are certain rules of business activity, before which all business entities are formally equal. But there are some that, due to their scale and political cover in the authorities of the leading world powers, enjoy a special status.
That is, they are more equal than others. And then, when such a system of “exclusive inequality,” as I would call it, in principle, exists and receives legal confirmation, then the only question is under what conditions, which companies will receive this kind of “special status.”
It is obvious that new, much greater opportunities will appear for the functioning of large companies in those territories whose status from the point of view of the world community is either ambiguous or, conversely, unambiguous. This is a whole series of territories, starting if we take Donbass, Crimea, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Kosovo, Northern Cyprus, Western Sahara, Artsakh... That is, in this way, large Western companies actually receive indulgence to work in these territories.
Moreover, we are not talking about any official registration, paying taxes, obtaining identification codes, taxpayer codes, or opening special accounts in the relevant financial institutions. We understand that in a significant part of such territories, taxes are paid either, as they say, “in kind”, when a certain part of the produced products is allocated and then a specially authorized company sells these products and directs the proceeds to the needs of the relevant administration or the self-proclaimed state, or some kind of political organization, be it terrorist, rebel, regardless of how it is classified by the international community, or simply for the needs of some local governments, field commanders - that is, those authorities that are not legitimate from the point of view international law. Or, partially, this kind of taxes is paid in cash, again it can be black, gray, the origin of these financial resources is a third matter. A fundamentally important point here is the financing of illegitimate government bodies,” he explained.
“And, in fact, if we look at how economic activity occurs in these types of territories, we will see that according to the same schemes, the same specially “specially authorized” companies, through their gaskets, supply, for example, coal from the uncontrolled territories of Donbass. The same companies, for example, supplied petroleum products to Turkey from the territory of the Caliphate, provided the same Caliphate with consumer goods, dual-use products, military goods, again, mainly from the territory of Turkey, but flows also went through Jordan, to a lesser extent through Iraq,” Belashko concluded.
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