MOSCOW, August 21. /TASS/. Gold and silver miner Polymetal International plc will hardly manage to execute transactions for the divestment of its Russian assets within six to nine months as the process requires obtaining authorizations from both the relevant Russian government commission and the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Union of Russian Gold Producers Chairman Sergey Kashuba told TASS.

"The complications in the deal, from my standpoint, are that it cannot be actually completed within six to nine months, since apart from the Russian government commission, a decision by the US Department of the Treasury, specifically in the form of OFAC, is required. Since the Nezhdaninskoe Deposit is a strategic one, the sole option for the Chinese to enter Russia to [access] an available strategic deposit would be via an intergovernmental agreement. This is an even longer path and it [hammering out such an agreement - TASS] normally takes years," Kashuba said.

Any suitable bidder among Russian companies to buy up Polymetal’s assets would have to be free of sanctions restrictions and able to borrow enough to make the acquisition, the industry expert said. "The Russian company that ‘makes the cut’ will be the one that is not under sanctions, since otherwise it would not get an OFAC license, and the one that has strong relations with government banks, since it is a very large-scale transaction that will require raising borrowed funds," Kashuba noted.

The industry expert also sees a possibility that Polymetal may attempt to dispose of the assets on a piecemeal basis if attempts to sell the entire package in one go fail.

Companies from both Russia and China are among the potential bidders to buy the gold giant’s Russian assets, Polymetal CEO Vitaly Nesis said earlier in an interview with the Financial Times.

Polymetal, which in early August redomiciled from UK crown dependency Jersey to Kazakhstan and holds assets in Russia and Kazakhstan, is among the top ten global gold producers and top five silver producers.