That was a leitmotif of today's conference on, "Power and Business: What Next?" arranged in Moscow with an active contribution of the German-based Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
"Above-board money must be amnestied. We need a chance to declare it, once and for all. Meanwhile, we don't know just where we are-not unlike a girl who isn't sure whether she is pregnant or has got away this time," complained David Yakoboshvili, president of Wimm-Bill-Dunne Co., dairy products and juices.
He repeated tax inspectors' catchphrase, "Pay your taxes and sleep well"-a timely call now that the matter has come to an edge with the Yukos controversy. Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, Russia's richest men and the petroleum giant's biggest stockholders, have long been in detention on suspected tax evasion.
The Russian Industrialists' and Entrepreneurs' Guild, which brings together the wealthiest company proprietors, has applied to the Cabinet for a capital amnesty, calling it to take a pragmatic stance, Igor Jurgens, guild vice-president, said to Novosti.
"We have offered our ideas. If implemented, they will bring in several billion US dollars to the Russian economy. But then, it will never settle the power-business clash," he remarked.
One single tax payment on smuggled-out money returning to homeland will make an impressive three billion dollars, several experts pointed out to the conference.
An amnesty bill is in the air, says Oleg Morozov of the United Russia parliamentary majority, Vice-Speaker of the State Duma, lower house. "I am siding with the idea of smuggled capital fully legalised. Possibly, the arrangement will put its holders on a par with the people who were meticulously paying their taxes all past years-but that's the least of all evils," he said to Novosti.
