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Comment by lotusmars | Hacker News Reader

Russian social media are full of winking posts hinting that McDonald's will sell operations to a Russian company which it will still profit from "behind the scenes" (via offshore proxy or some other indirect way). They also hint that this will pave the way for other Western companies currently in limbo: split ownership between controllable proxy and Russian owner. And at the same time shout in Bloomberg how much you condemn Russian invasion to pacify Western public.

Can anyone confirm if it's possible? I hope it's Russian desinformation again, but I fear it's possible looking at how "well" Western "sanctions" work (Moscow feels great, ruble is much stronger than even pre-war).

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Can't confirm and anyone who can, will not. Sanctions evasion is something OFAC frowns upon and comes down on rather heavily. Just few weeks ago banks that were 'offering options' to customers were smacked down[1]:

"The US Department of the Treasury in a statement said it put sanctions on Russian commercial bank Transkapitalbank, whose representatives it said serve several banks in Asia, including in China, and the Middle East, and have suggested options to evade international sanctions."

So.. yeah. It is possible ( even with total embargo it can happen as NK has shown ), but it comes with risk. If it will be done, it will be done very quietly with as few people knowing as possible.

[1]https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/4/20/new-us-sanctions...

Ruble is definitely not much stronger, it’s just practically frozen so it is not defined by free market rules, but by Russian government made ones.

I have seen a lot of people write this but I don't understand how. Shouldn't there be a black market rate in that case? Is there one? Some quick Googling gave no articles.

I am almost sure there is such market. If you visit Russia somehow, you are likely to exchange currency with citizen at beneficial rates. Chances are its very similar to pre iron curtain fall - people made fortunes in Poland on such exchanges. Same thing in Cuba, there were two currencies - one local, one for internationals(unsure how it is now).

Ye. I mean just cutting out Forex middleman is beneficial.

It would be interesting to know the "real" rate to get the scope of the currency control.

No, Moscow is fine and you can buy foreign currency freely now. This is a delusion based on Western politians' loud promises which never came true. We were promised crushing sanctions that would reduce Russian economy to 1980's style rubble with black market of foreign currencies. It's all just a load of hype. It's important to set this clear because most of HN commenters seems to be under impression those sanctions actually had intended effect.

Can you buy a new car with all this money?

Yes. It's more expensive than before, but there's a thriving market on Telegram with prices fixed in EUR/USD. Also Chinese cars sales are growing and soon market will be flooded.

So second hand at black market rates. Sounds like sanctions are working after all.

There is not much use for dollars in Russia right now other than hoarding them (you can buy goods, but many imports are sanctioned). And after initial panic subsided, trust in the banking system looks quite high so people are less keen on hoarding cash.

Also, if you are an oligarch who plans to load your private plane with suitcases of dollars and fly to the Cayman islands, you are probably sanctioned, so that is out of question too.

No problem flying to Dubai to Istanbul and using their banking system. Actually most of Russian and Belarussian elite are happily using it. You can meet all kinds of adult kids of Lukashenko, Yanukovich there or an odd Russian silovik.

There are black markets in the form of Telegram chats and bots where people exchange cash. They aren't so necessary right now because certain limitations have been lifted and while it's not easy, you can buy cash USD or send wires to other countries.

There are two things holding the ruble high: 1. All exporters have to sell 80% of their FX income in 3 days 2. The import has shrunk dramatically and it's hard for people to travel to other countries (so individuals and businesses don't need that much cash to begin with)

Where do you get that? You can actually buy dollars in Moscow from banks. Everything is mostly back to normal or even better (retail banks sell dollars cheaper than pre-war levels). There was a brief panic and tight controls in anticipation of more severe sanctions but they never came.

Russian here. You have no point, check any exchange, in case of the accessibility Binance p2p There was growing black market exchange once ruble fallen to the 115ish to usd, and the spread was about 20%, so you could buy green cash at 150ish, but since then those exchanges shrinked.

It's actually 64 RUB per USD, Tinkoff bank sells for 67 for example. Compare to 78 pre-war. This week Central Bank lifted another restrictions and you can get up to $50k out of the country. I think unfortunately Americans drank Biden's lying kool-aid of "devastating sanctions" and happily looked away prematurely.

> McDonald's will sell operations to a Russian company which it will still profit from "behind the scenes" (via offshore proxy or some other indirect way).

so Huawei way of solving sanction issues...

let's all pretend Honor is now different entity bought by bunch of unrelated companies

Thats what GM(opel), IBM(dehomag) and Coca-Cola(fanta) did during WW2 in Germany. But I have a feeling it wont fly nowadays with social media and politicians hungry for grandstanding, especially in light of recently passed second Lend-Lease.

It's just one of the possibilities. It's not like corporations aren't full of “government relations” staff whose job is inventing creative names for bribing officials, and creative methods of doing so. Especially in “interesting” countries where it's easy to have an excuse that “everyone does that”.

There is technology that can be important for military industry; no doubt it is going to be tightly controlled. There are people who decided it was unacceptable to work in Russia; it was their choice. However, these corporations are not people, nor they are important in the arms race. If we skip the fact that Central Bank severed everyone's ability to do business to control the money flow out of the country, corporations that left Russia made statements about leaving it for the media picture. And flashy media picture is once again really important to hide the elephant in the room — what really powers Russian economy, and how. It's not McDonalds.

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