Freeze payments extended until 2025
The government submitted to the State Duma a bill proposing to suspend until January 1, 2025, compensation for deposits placed by citizens in the USSR Savings Bank back in the Soviet era. The fate of this money has been in question for many years. The authorities regularly extend the freeze on payments, since the legislative mechanism for the compensation process has not yet been developed.
Meanwhile, we are talking about huge amounts, unaffordable for the federal budget. By 2022, the volume of payments on Soviet deposits depreciated in 1990-1992, according to financiers, will reach 49.7 trillion rubles, and in another two years – 53.9 trillion. Full compensation for the deposits of the former USSR is provided for by the Russian law “On the basic cost of the required social set”. The previous date of its commencement was January 1, 2024. Now it has been postponed again for 12 months.
Initially, the law, according to which Soviet investors are entitled to state compensation for funds burned out after 1991, was adopted in 1995. It guarantees the restoration and preservation of the savings of citizens placed in deposits of the Sberbank of the USSR until June 20, 1991, in deposits under personal insurance contracts and in government securities of the USSR and the RSFSR in Russia until January 1, 1992. Payments should be made by converting into debt obligations using the debt ruble. However, the government has not yet developed a legislative mechanism for this procedure, and since 2003 the payment of compensation has been constantly postponed. And most importantly, there are no financial sources for payments in the country.
“There was such an Italian film from 1971 -“ The investigation is over, forget it, ”says Mikhail Belyaev, an expert at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies. – Apparently, the cabinet of ministers is acting in accordance with this dictum: the question of compensation for Soviet deposits has been put on the back burner. When 2025 arrives, it will be postponed to 2030. In a word, we are observing a purely bureaucratic approach: they say, let the next composition of the government deal with this, let it be better for others to have a headache ”.
Obviously, Belyaev notes, the Finance Ministry simply does not have the necessary funds. The state should be responsible for payments, that is, the federal budget, which does not have such an article. Every year the task becomes more complicated, the “loop” is tightening more and more, because we are talking not only about the principal amounts of deposits, but also about the absolutely insane percentages that have come across them since the beginning of the 1990s. It is also unclear at what exchange rate they should be recalculated, taking into account both the hyperinflation of 1992 and the denomination of 1998, when banknotes were exchanged with a ratio of 1000: 1, that is, a thousand old ones corresponded to one new ruble. Another unresolved nuance is legal: who has the right to this money today? Is the basis for obtaining them a registered passbook that is not prescribed in a will or other document related to inheritance rights?
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