MOSCOW, July 14. /TASS/. The lawmaking commission of the Russian government has approved amendments to laws on the buyback of Russian assets by foreign investors, with the State Duma set to discuss them at a plenary meeting on July 22, Chairman of the State Duma committee for ownership, land and property relations Sergey Gavrilov told TASS.

The relevant package of amendments enshrines a new article in the law on foreign investments, prescribing the procedure of the waiver to exercise the buyback of stocks or participation interests in case of their divestment in favor of Russian persons in 2022, the lawmaker said. "A Russian purchaser has a right to approach the Arbitration Court of the Moscow Region with a request to invalidate an option if the totality of the following terms are in place: the seller is related to an unfriendly jurisdiction; the deal was made during the period from February 22 to December 31, 2022 without permission from the government commission for control of foreign investments; the selling price significantly deviated down from the market one; at least three years passed from the divestment time; and the organization is in the sphere of sanitary-epidemiological control and duly honors its obligations towards employees and lenders," Gavrilov said.

The court also has a right to consider evidence of the unfair behavior of the former owner, particularly attempts to obstruct asset management or conceal information, and reduce the compensation amount or dismiss its payment in such a case," the lawmaker said. "The new norm is aimed at preventing the return of control over strategically significant assets through formal legal schemes," he noted.

The particular attention is paid among provisions of the bill to settlement of legal consequences of transactions made during the period of large-scale exit of foreign investors from the Russian market in 2022, Gavrilov noted. "Assets in some cases were formally transferred to the ownership of Russian entities but terms of transactions provided for a buyback right, as a rule, at a fixed price and within a certain period. Such constructions actually enabled the former buyer to keep levers of control and the possibility of the return. The draft law sets out a right of a new owner to repudiate performance of such obligation if the buyer is related to an unfriendly jurisdiction and terms of the deal evidence its formal or economic non-equivalence. The uncertainty of the legal status of assets transferred into the Russian ownership with deferred commitments of their return is thereby eliminated and the priority of the domestic jurisdiction is established in regulating such relations," the lawmaker added.