Business in Russia

Business in Russia is complicated and often extremely dangerous. It is better not to deal with it without complete and reliable information about what a business in Russia is. On this page you can consult the main features of running business in Russia.

Laws and state

The complexity of doing business in Russia is largely attributable to the situation with the Russian laws particularly and the Russian state as a whole.

A bit about the construction business:
How the roads and bridges are built in Russia

What the imperfection of current laws causes:

1. Numerous inspections from various government agencies.
2. The difficulty of obtaining permits and licenses.
3. Difficulty with opening, closing and functioning of legal entities.
4. Huge and numerous fines imposed not only for various contraventions, but also by mistake (and this is not uncommon).
5. The enormous difficulties associated with the protection of their rights often in the complete absence of the ability to protect themselves and their business from arbitrariness and lawlessness.

Don’t forget what the Russian state is. Anything can happen in this country anytime. Nationalization and default are far from the most terrible events that have already occurred earlier in this country and may be repeated in the future. Also, do not overlook about the utter powerlessness of the people and the lack of opportunities for the Russians to influence anything.

Corruption

Corruption in Russia is the norm, and now it is absolutely unreal to defeat it. If you want to run business in this country, get ready to face extortion.

And are you aware that it is often impossible to do business in Russia successfully without kinship and other ties among officials and in the criminal environment?

The highest level of bureaucracy, numerous inspections, dependence on obtaining permits and licenses are an excellent basis for various types of corruption.

Moreover, the so-called «mutual responsibility» works quite well in Russia. This topic is quite complex and shouldn’t be mentioned. It is enough to memorize a simple fact that no one will protect you from extortion of bribes, while very serious problems may arise, when you try to search defense from corrupt officials.

Bandits and competitors

Organized criminal groups continue to jeopardize business in Russia. Of course, the situation is not comparable with the 1980s and 1990s. Although not every business owner faces this danger, it exists and is quite real.

Now bandits are very successfully attracted by many Russian businessmen in the struggle against competitors.

The attempts to “sic” various control structures on rivals are another distinctive feature of the Russian business. So to say, “call an inspection to a competitor” by writing a denunciation to certain state organizations.

In Russia they are used to fighting with competitors in every possible way. Albeit not everyone will deal with the outright criminality, there are people who consider crime as the norm.

There are some of the methods used by competitors:

1. Temporary sale of goods and services at low prices that are often below market ones in order to displace rivals.
2. Influencing competitors with criminal offenses like blackmail, kidnapping, intimidation, involvement of security forces for illegal checks, arson, physical violence.
3. Combining competitors against the manufacturer of any products, goods, services.

Big business has other much more severe problems.

I hope you’ll take this information seriously and draw the right conclusions.