Tax and security officials renewed attack on Tomsk «Lamp»

Dear colleagues, good afternoon!

We continue to inform you about the difficult period of the Tomsk Electric Lamp Plant.

Pavel Glushkov

In the Tomsk region, the tax authorities are forcing the company into bankruptcy, and the investigators, after the pre-election lull, continued active actions in the criminal case of tax evasion.

Lit up

Sibkray has already told https://sibkray.ru/news/1/937203/ about the situation that is developing around the group of companies "Light of the XXI century" - the successor of the legendary Tomsk Electric Lamp Plant.

On the ruins of the bankrupt TELZ, Vladislav Golubev and his colleagues restored production in 2007 and soon became the largest suppliers of LED lamp products and the only manufacturers of filamentous LEDs in the country. More than 250 million rubles were invested in the reconstruction of the plant. But the launch of an automated section for the production of filamentous LEDs in 2018 required the mobilization of all the resources of the enterprise. Debts for mandatory payments began to arise.

“In fact, there was a choice: either pay taxes or close production,” says Vladislav Golubev.

Die or be saved? Tomsk "lampoviks" chose the latter, but they had to periodically accumulate and pay off tax arrears. Nevertheless, the tax authorities transferred information about the arising debts to the Investigative Department of the Tomsk Region of the Investigative Committee of Russia and there they opened a criminal case on deliberate tax evasion.

In addition, the tax authorities calculated that the debt of one legal entity included in the group of companies, OOO Rusled, exceeds 70 million rubles. The Lampoviks challenged the amount in court. For an enterprise that pays about 50 million rubles in taxes a year, a one-time payment of 70 million rubles is a premature death.

On the first day of the restrictive measures, March 30, investigators and Russian National Guards infiltrated a dangerous production facility in the city center and began to seize documents.

- We are not some kind of drug cartel, - Golubev is indignant. - We manufacture products that people and defense enterprises of Russia need. Nobody gives investigators the right to intimidate people, to come home with a summons for interrogation at 6 in the morning. Many of our employees - and among them there are veterans, elderly people - began to have heart and health problems ...

Outraged by the attack on their home enterprise, 900 veterans of the plant and 400 of its workers in August announced their readiness to defend the production, to hold mass protests. On the eve of a single voting day, such protest activities were especially unnecessary for the regional administration, and Governor Sergei Zhvachkin gave the task to understand the situation.

A special headquarters was created under the leadership of as many as two deputy governors: Igor Shaturny and Andrei Antonov. At first, even the tax authorities softened at the headquarters. Only the investigators stated that paying off tax debts does not change the fact of tax evasion. This means that a criminal case can be reanimated at any time.

The legal logic is deadly: fertile black soil should always remember what it came from.

After the elections, even a flood

On September 13, in the Tomsk region, the United Russia party, with a record low turnout, showed a record result even for a freedom-loving regional center: 25%. The party in power failed miserably in the elections to the Tomsk City Duma. The administration of the region, apparently, realized that nothing could be worse and gave up. Or maybe she only pretended that she was going to help her own taxpayer.

Immediately after the elections on September 18, the headquarters met again on the situation at the Tomsk "Lamp". Now one deputy governor Igor Shaturny played the role of extras. The head of the tax department for the Tomsk region, Gennady Morozov, said that he would collect taxes from the operating enterprise at all costs. And again he announced the amount of claims of the department - 70 million rubles.

The investigators, who this time ignored the headquarters altogether, said in a private conversation that they had suspended the criminal case only until the director Vladislav Golubev, the main defendant, returned from abroad. As soon as the restrictions are lifted due to the pandemic and Golubev returns from Georgia, the criminal case will be reopened.

On September 22, the tax office issued a decree on the imposition of an administrative penalty against the management of Rusled for not declaring themselves bankrupt.

In a word, the investigators, the tax authorities, and the governor, together with his team, who signed for inability, continue to cut the branch on which they are sitting.

Powerful profit centers are leaving the Tomsk region one after another. The last example is Transneft-Tomsk. The pride of Tomsk, IT specialists, whole firms move to other regions of the country and California. The industry patriarch, Elecard, the world leader in video encoding and decoding, announced the relocation of the office from the dying Tomsk special economic zone to Kaliningrad. 100 families leave at once. The cat cried out for its own taxpayers in the region. The public debt of the budget in a pandemic year is likely to exceed 40 billion - more than half of the planned revenues. Municipalities miss up to 70% of their own tax revenues. To requests for help in the regional department of finance, they answer: take loans from commercial banks.

In such a situation, giving up one of the few taxpayers and a large employer to be torn apart is at least short-sighted.

It is a pity that there is no criminal punishment for willful short-sightedness.