MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday urged Russian businessmen to repatriate capital from offshore accounts, warning that they might lose easy access to their money amid international efforts to tighten control over offshore banking.
Putin, speaking to a session of the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, warned that offshore accounts will be placed under increasingly close scrutiny by the international community, which is fighting to uproot funding for terrorist groups.
"The international community will continue efforts to limit the opportunities for using resources placed in offshore accounts," Putin said, adding that Russian businessmen may soon find it increasingly difficult to access their offshore money.
"I am not telling you that these accounts will be frozen tomorrow," he said, but added that it may soon be next to impossible to unblock them.
"It will be much more sensible for the business community together with the government to think about creating favorable conditions for investing Russian resources, including those placed in the West, into the Russian economy," Putin said.
Throughout the 1990s, Russia's spiraling economic turmoil, endemic official corruption, controversial legislation and weak official controls have all contributed to a massive exodus of Russian capital to the West. Estimates of the amount of capital flight from Russia since the 1991 Soviet collapse range from dlrs 200 billion to as much as dlrs 400 billion, said Yelena Panina, vice president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, who attended Wednesday's meeting.
Putin said that despite increasingly warm ties between Russia and the West, western countries might be reluctant to allow large amounts of Russian capital to leave. "Western economies which possess resources of Russian origin are not interested in them being removed," he said.
Russian officials have continuously spoken about the need to lure back capital from offshore accounts, but the government has been vague about its promise to amnesty capital repatriated from abroad. There has been little indication so far that the capital tide has turned even though the Russian economy has registered growth in the last few years.
Putin on Wednesday acknowledged that the government bore part of the blame for the capital flight because of its failure to create a normal investment climate. He promised that the authorities wouldn't demand those who bring money back to Russia provide a detailed account of its origin.
"The government must not catch everyone by the sleeve, demanding immediate explanations of where this money came from, especially as it has failed to create normal conditions for investing this money in the national economy in the past," Putin said. "But you in the business community and the government must sit and think together about how to bring this money back home."