OREANDA-NEWS. The overwhelming majority of German companies operating in Russia refused to change their investment plans after the arrest of the founder of the Baring Vostok fund, Michael Calvi. This is evidenced by the results of the survey “The business climate in Russia-2019: a survey of German business”, conducted by the Russian-German Chamber of Commerce.

Approximately 96% of survey participants said that the Calvi case had no effect on their plans, 1% said they abandoned their plans, and about 4% said they had postponed investment. However, the head of the Russian-German Chamber of Commerce Matthias Shepp believes that even such a small number of pessimists testifies to great losses for the economy because of the Calvi case. “In a short period, we see a loss of hundreds of millions of euros for Russia”, said Shepp.

The seriousness of the problem is evidenced by the fact that 42% of respondents called Calvi's arrest a negative factor influencing Russia's investment climate, while 1% of the participants said that this influence was “catastrophic.” The positive impact of the arrest on the investment climate was stated by 1% of respondents, the majority either did not see any influence at all (36%), or did not determine its assessment (21%).

“Calvi’s arrest was indeed a major blow to the investment climate in Russia. Many foreign top managers said to themselves: if something happened to Calvi himself, it could ultimately affect me and my company", explained Schepp, noting that business representatives demand that the investigation of the Calvi case be carried out process, not a secret investigation of the special services". The criminal case was a shock for the Russian economy, said Alexei Kudrin, head of the Accounts Chamber. According to him, since the beginning of the year the outflow of capital from Russia has doubled, reaching $ 40 billion.