Radiy Khabirov: "Buy-out offer is no longer relevant for BSC"

The republican authorities are no longer considering the possibility of buying out part of the shares from the main owners of the Bashkir Soda Company. The Head of Bashkiria Radiy Khabirov stated it in an interview with RBC. The main option for regaining control over the enterprise is now the recognition of illegal transactions of 2007 and 2013 to dilute the controlling stake, as a result of which the republic reduced its stake in the company from 62% to 38%.

The Head of Bashkiria, Radiy Khabirov, proposed to return to the republic a control over the Bashkir Soda Company (BSC), increasing the republic's share in the authorized capital to a controlling stake. Now the republic owns 38.28%.

On August 26, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented on the conflict around the BSC having named the situation “siphoning off money uncontrollably and with no investment obligations”. The Russian President said that the controlling stake in Bashkir Soda Company belonged to private owners, but “the money earned by the company is hardly ever invested in its development and does not stay in the region. Considering that the company’s total revenue in 2019 was about 45 billion rubles, only 2.5 billion was invested. Where did the money go? It went to offshore accounts, of course.”

The head of state instructed the Prosecutor General’s Office to investigate the legality of the deal that resulted in the state losing control over these assets.

Prosecutors are already conducting the check. The republic's leadership provided them with all the documents on the transactions of 2007-2013. The damage from the privatization of Soda is estimated, according to preliminary calculations, at several tens of billions of rubles.