The undercover fight continues in the State Duma around the scandalous bill No 160605-8 proposed on July 15 “On Amending the Federal Law “On Advertising”, proposed by United Russia backbencher Artem Kiryanov. One of the oldest deputies of the Duma, the head of the parliamentary committee for the protection of competition Valery Gartung. “The advertising community, the e-commerce and e-ad industries, non-governmental organizations in the field of entrepreneurship, experts, the antimonopoly authority agree that the bill does not meet its goals and will harm the economy.” From ourselves, we note that this position is supported by the authorities of the regions directly working with this industry.
“The creation of a single operator that manages all the digital resources and structures of the country carries the risks of uncontrolled placement of advertising all over Russia at once,” warns Valery Gartung, citing experts in the field of cybersecurity. – This may include prohibited, provocative information. Centralization does not guarantee the protection of information, but, on the contrary, creates conditions for its vulnerability, experts are convinced.
It seems very strange that such specific law-making arises during the implementation of the SVO, in difficult conditions, when any business must be treated with the utmost care.
Initially, after July 15, Chairman of the State Duma Viacheslav Volodin as an exception, he gave a month to prepare the bill for the second reading and introduce amendments to these Kiryanovsky amendments, unacceptable for the country. The advertising community, regional authorities, the Federal Antimonopoly Service and other state bodies jointly prepared a new project, taking into account all the comments made. The government has also prepared appropriate amendments, in general, even more radical ones, excluding the emergence of a single monopoly operator. But suddenly things slowed down and began to reverse. The second reading is permanently postponed. Now it was supposed to take place after September 9, but on a call from the Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko rescheduled for October.
As our source notes, two notable figures are openly interested in lobbying for the bill in the first edition of Kiryanov. it Alexey Gromov, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration and Chief Media Officer of the Kremlin. The seriousness of his intentions is confirmed by the fact that the son of Alexei Alekseevich plunged headlong into the affairs of Russ Outdoor and even started an office there. On the part of the Government, protection of the law is provided by the already mentioned Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, who heads the entire apparatus. By the way, the FAS amendments that save advertisers from monopolization have been lying on his desk without movement for several weeks now.
But who is directing and funding this whole story and who are the real beneficiaries of Russ Outdoor’s eventual rise? Several sources at once claim that this is the almighty Head of the Presidential Administration himself Anton Vaino and his longtime business partner Suleiman Kerimov.
The influential oligarch has already been featured in several outdoor advertising deals. Thus, Kerimov financed the purchase by Vera-Olimp of the advertising contractor RZD Laisa, and earlier, with the help of the same Vera-Olimp, he also bought out a significant part of Russ Outdoor itself. Market participants do not even undertake to estimate how much this company is actually the property of Suleiman Kerimov. It is assumed that a well-known businessman will then properly “package” this business and sell it to someone larger.
Of course, business is business. Not in white gloves. But the combinations described above during SVO cause disgust. It is clear that the petty lobbyist Artem Kiryanov, with his anti-state lawmaking, is a pawn and expendable material. But to mess with such a dirty character, by the way, one of the few Duma deputies who abstained from the vote on the recognition of the republics of Donbass, is to put a stigma on oneself. Do his actual accomplices understand this?
