Mail.Ru Group led “VK” and “Classmates” of offshore companies – Express-News

15.11 | 14:16

Mail.Ru Group, which had previously owned two popular Russian social networks via offshore companies, the ownership structure has changed and now owns them through domestic firms. Legal experts say that an outright ban on working with offshore jurisdictions in Russia there, but for leading companies such work is complicated by submission of reports and enhanced control over the transfer of funds. This is due to the fact that from June 1 this year came into force a new law № 140-FZ “On the voluntary declaration of assets by individuals and accounts (deposits) at banks and on amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation.” Therefore, owners of the largest social network “VKontakte” and “Classmates” decided to withdraw fixed assets of foreign companies from offshore zones.

According to recent reports, everything changed dramatically in August. And the changes have affected all divisions of the corporation Mail.Ru Group, which is the owners of the aforementioned social networks. Of course, this led to the fact that foreign colleagues suffered losses. In this case, there are two companies that are in Cyprus – Vk.Com Holdings Limited and Odnoklassniki Holdings Limited.

Previously, they were the owners of a half share in each of the social networks, but recently the picture has changed completely. On the scene came the Russian company OOO “Internet company Meyl.ru”, which now owns 49.93% of social network “VKontakte”, and the remaining 50.07% of their own became a wholly owned subsidiary of “Internet company Meyl.ru” – LLC “Mail .RU”. Accordingly, the income and revenues of the network, will now be in the accounts of Russian banks.

As for the “Odnoklassniki”, there can be seen a similar situation, although there is 100% stake was taken over by Russian legal entity LLC “Internet company Meyl.ru”, which means that at least 9.2 billion rubles of profit, which got gay last year, will be stored on Russian accounts. By the way, “VKontakte” has earned in the past year to 4.3 billion rubles.

In the company of “Internet company Meyl.ru” explained that all economic decisions “related to the consolidation and simplification of its group structure” .