Friday, March 1, 2013

Mix-up in State Register Shocks 1,000 Business Owners


Vedomosti
Mix-up in State Register Shocks 1,000 Business Owners
The tax authorities have put the change in business ownership down to a system crash during input of new data and data exchange with the Migration Service.
Businessman Roman Romachev suddenly discovered that four companies that he owns, including R-Techno, have been registered in a different name since January 31. The “new owner,” Moscow resident Alina Zhukova, was just as surprised when Romachev contacted her to give her the news. Her only recent encounter with official documents was obtaining a new passport.
According to the SPARK Interfax database of company reports, the change of ownership happened “after new data was input into the Unified State Register of Legal Entities by the state authority responsible for issuing identification documents for Russian citizens valid in Russia.”  The State Register is maintained by the Federal Taxation Service, while passports are issued by the Federal Migration Service.
Romachev’s inquiry to the taxation authority brought an unexpected response. The failure was caused by “a large amount of incorrect data on changes in passport details,” supplied by the migration service, Inna Miroshnikova, head of the service’s interregional inspectorate for centralized data processing, wrote in a letter. She said they stopped data processing and exchange with other official agencies on February 12 because of the problem.
Passport details are updated automatically in the State Register, based on the migration service data, a taxation service source explained. A bug in the migration service software caused a mix-up that affected about 1,000 companies. The migration service has already notified its colleagues about the problem.
However, a Federal Migration Service representative said he could not comment on a fault that happened at a different institution.
The taxation service is now verifying all the passport data received and the changes made to the State Register during the risk period, the source said, adding that all the errors will be corrected without involving the legal entities concerned.
The information on the State Register does not confirm ownership of equity shares and stocks, said Sergei Kazakov from the Sameta law firm. The State Register is a titular document that lists the actual owners of businesses and links to sources that may contain the same data. However, to sell shares you have to present a package of the requisite documents, which cannot be obtained based on an entry in the State Register.
This is not the first glitch to affect the State Register. In 2007, Vedomosti discovered that nine out of ten companies headed by Vladimir Bogdanov, director general of Surgutneftegas, had been erased. Their investments accounted for over 40 percent of the value of Surgutneftegas. The Federal Taxation Service did not respond to Vedomosti’s request, but the data was eventually restored.
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