OREANDA-NEWS. September 28, 2009. TNK-BP suggested that the Federal Customs Service may pay back the sums adjudged by the court to the oil company or set these sums off the future payments of the company, said Igor Maydannik, Vice President of TNK-BP, reported the press-centre of TNK-BP.

“We understand the difficulties facing the federal budget in current financial recession conditions and feel obliged to suggest that the Federal Customs Service may return the sums unduly levied on the company in stages or set these sums off our future payments,” said he.

As reported earlier, on August 25, 2009, TNK-BP filed a claim at the arbitration court charging 6.3 billion rubles from the Federal Customs Service as compensation for the export taxes unduly paid by the company. A preliminary hearing on this case is scheduled for September 28. In May 2009, the Supreme Arbitration Court sustained the similar claim of TNK-BP for return of 8 million rubles and 4 billion rubles. TNK-BP informed that the customs authorities incorrectly imposed taxes on the company for export of oil and oil products in 2005–2008. Overall, TNK-BP requires that the Federal Customs Service should return a total of 10.3 billion rubles to the company.

“We cannot say that we are talking about some exorbitant sums. In 2005–2008, we paid some 1.1 trillion rubles of export taxes to the budget. In August 2009, we paid approximately 26.2 billion rubles of customs duties to the federal budget. The payments made by the company in August to budgets of all levels amounted to nearly 50 billion rubles. This means that the Federal Customs Service has to return or set off the sum accumulated in the last three years that is less than one percent of our payments in this period or, in other words, just one fifth of the sum the company is now paying to budgets of all levels every month,” explained Mr. Maydannik.

At the same time, the press center of the Federal Antimonopoly Service said to Interfax that TNK-BP filed an appeal to the Federal Antimonopoly Service about the refusal of the Federal Customs Service to receive centralized payments of customs duties from the oil company. The appeal of TNK-BP was received by the Federal Antimonopoly Service on September 15 and is now under consideration in two departments – the Department of Control and Supervision in the Fuel and Energy Sector and the Department of Control of Government Authorities. The Federal Antimonopoly Service did not make any comments on this appeal and only said that it is analyzing the situation.

The press center of the Federal Customs Service did not comment the dispute with TNK-BP saying that it is necessary to wait for the court verdict.

TNK-BP holds that centralized payment of customs duties is beneficial first and foremost for the state, because all of the collected sums go into the federal budget at once instead of being received through dozens of regional customs services. “Apart from that, we do not understand how are we different from Rosneft or Lukoil, for example, who were entitled by the Federal Customs Service to make centralized payments of customs duties. For this reason, we filed a claim at the Federal Antimonopoly Service insisting that we have the right for simplified payment of duties,” emphasized the Vice President of TNK-BP.