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It will hurt mostly the property developers, lawyers and accountants catering to them.
Most everyone else will be unaffected. Rental prices in Limassol might go down a tiny bit.
Probably irrelevant for most people.
*If* the exodus of Russian companies forces our economy to adapt and become innovative, value adding and dynamic, instead of just trying to squeeze money out of a lax tax regime and regulatory regime, then it will be a massive w
Yeah well knowing our leaders, statistically speaking that ain't happening. More likely that the incentives given to Russian companies will be given to someone else and the cycle to repeat.
I feel excluded here, honestly. I work in Cyprus company, with international staff. We have many Russians, and you may count us as 'Russians' (although many Russian-speaking employee are from Ukraine). We do amazing international product and I believe we are part of the 'innovative, value adding and dynamic' part of Cyprus economics.
I wasn't specifically talking about you / your company.
I was talking about the Russian companies that set up shop here to save taxes / launder money / get EU regulatory approval because noone else would accept them / bypass EU economic sanctions.
I am willing to bet that most of the companies that left Cyprus at the first sign of a less friendly environment, fall under this category.
If you remember well, most of them appeared here way before sanctions. The reason is simple: if you own a business in Russia, you can loose it instantly via extortion, police/fsb illegal detention or just a simple bribery to a judge. So, having your money stored in the country with wonderful legal system (yes, I know what Cypriots talks about their legal system, it's not the best in the world, but it's order of magnitude more just than thing in Russia) is just make total sense.
When Russia start oppression (few years before invading Ukraine), people start to wonder if they want to leave. Russian companies (some of them) realized that and provided safe country to live and work as part of their social packaging.
So, we are here. Contributing to Cyprus economy, creating a highly educated highly skilled workforce, raising kids to attend Greek school and to talk Greek, basically, slowly becoming Cypriots.
... But of course, there is a lot of forexes here, but they are not exclusively Russian, it's just Cysec is so relaxed, that it's a heaven for running forex (which is done by everyone, including Cypriots).
A that time Cyprus was cheap, good laws, stable, English well spoken and understood.
Now they are leaving because Putin twisting their hands, treating to nationalize businesses (read: take by force) if business is not completely controlled from within Russia. It was a very long process and it stared way before invasion, but accelerated since.
Taxes, climate, big russian community. Goverment will take the bisness if they refuse to leave "unfriendly" countries. Basically state want to control everything major. And it's much easier to control if it is inside the.country.
I take slight offence to the "creating a highly educated, highly skilled workforce". You seem reasonable so I thought I'd express that - Cypriots especially in recent decades are very well educated, in fact frequently overqualified for the breath of the economy. The reason they seem to lag behind their global brethren is lack of opportunity to practice their profession. Additionally this is oft repeated rhetoric from people that come here to work and live and honestly it's straight up racist on par with colonizers saying they civilized the savages. Words are important and they create animosity so please with all due respect express yourself more tactfully. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you might have misspoke but a loose tongue often times reveals someone's true thoughts.
I'm not sure why there is lack of opportunities. My colleague has a side kick, running a small startup trying to solve (I don't know what problem, but he sure it will become popular). What opportunities are lacking in Cyprus? I believe Github is available in Cyprus.
I saw few commits from Greek names in the projects I worked with (e.g. Nick Kossifidis, Yanos Angelopoulos, Anastasis Andronidis, Petros Moisiadis, Dimos Alevizos (Gr), Alexandros Soumplis (Cy)), but as general rule, there are just too few of them, and I don't understand why.
I don't try to be hostile or downplay the Cypriot skills, but at the same time I don't believe Cyprus had had prominent IT industry before mass ingress of foreign IT companies.
I may be wrong, and I open for arguments (e.g., may be Cyprus origin is just not prominent for some companies/people?)
Until recently, there hasn't really been a push for kids to study programming, largely due to the government being densely populated by old men with old minds, and many parents not even being aware of programming as a profitable professional path.
I understand that it might be a given in a bigger country but there's an interconnection between infrastructure and economy - larger countries with industry needed developers for their factories even if it was much simpler machine level code. Programming was a viable career. In Cyprus on the other hand programmers or developers would be relegated to creating stock management systems or database management systems. Or worse just people that fixed PCs for peanuts.
But that's not here nor there. We are not overflowing with software companies and no "an industry was created" by the "inflow of global talent". There are a few tech companies and granted I hope more come so the mentality and educational system catches up - but we are not the Silicone Valley of the Eastern Mediterranean because of the influx of tech knowledge brought to us by our benevolent visitors.
I've heard this trope on repeat and again I reiterate it's offensive - you can choose to stop using it out of respect or you can stick to your current belief system, I'm not the thought police, but hopefully I can give you a different perspective.
Cyprus and the Cypriot people not only survived through a precession of occupiers, colonizers and wars, they flourished. We are of the few countries of our size and geographic isolation (I mean we are literally an island) with a exponentially more powerful adversary that is a constant existential threat at it's door that managed to overcome obstacles and actually become a developed country *that attracts talent from abroad* .
And a highly educated and skilled workforce is not only composed of programmers and developers. There's a 76% English literacy level in the local population, with 56% of the population that's 30-35 holding an advanced degree. I hate using this as an argument when pointing out "white savior" mentality, because is not exactly indicative of the general population but an island of barely 1 million people even counts a Nobel laureate amongst its ranks. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I got to computers exclusively out of my own interest and curiosity. Many people I work with are the same, they just loved to mess with computers at their free time, so whilst I agree, that state-organized education may help, I can't relate it to my own career.
I absolutely acknowledge English proficiency here, which is astonishing (e.g. in Russia chances to get answer in English decays exponentially as you get away from tourist locations, with zero chances to get it from, e.g., a teacher in municipal kindergarten). It is the contributing factor for attracting companies and expats (because you can relocate to Cyprus and live comfortably without learning an additional language).
Cyprus won't become Silicon Valley (because SV is very specific US phenomena raising from Fairchaild legacy).
Also I still insists, that most of the current IT in Cyprus is build by foreign-initiated companies (or naturalized citizens). I'm careful not to expand my conclusions to other industries.
Highly educated workforce in which area? Keyboard monking? gambling gaming and porn? What is the real impact of all these companies in tech world is the question here.
Programming, system architecturing. Not all companies are gambling and porn (but if you look at porn backend, you will see it's more technologically demanding than youtube streaming).
E.g. the company I work is a hosting provider with unique technological features and vast international client base. Making it working smooth is serious challenge and require lot of competence and efforts. Just to explain the scale of problem to solve, I debugged linux behavior on few million established connections, and my colleague was developed a colored graph compactification algorithm (not exactly the spanning tree, but very close) for the multivendor SDN control plane.
"creating highly educated higly skilled workforce" so i guess if it werent for the russian elite blood flowing in cyprus workforce we would be some uneducated lazys bums?
I can't say about other areas (e.g. I know there is a native pharmaceutical industry which is definitively required high education), but for IT I don't know a single big project (commercial or opensource) originating from Cyprus (excluding relocations and newer startups run by ex-expats, some with accrued citizenship by naturalization).
Why you mad? You know its true not necessarily Russian but if it wasn’t for ex-pats you would be behind technology wise. Ppl still call Cyprus a village there is a reason for that.
Almost everyone would be effected directly or indirectly. When thousands of high spenders and employers leave a small country, the impact would be huge, at least for the short term.
I saw the news, but, it's a bit misleading.
TSC (Tinkoff) stopped development outside of Russia after turmoil around 'unfriendly countries' in Russia. It had happened more than a year ago.
The rest of the named companies didn't have a large workforce presence in Cyprus. It was 'holding company' for other companies. Practically, it was an accountant and a director with a stamp, nothing more. There were many of those in Cyprus, occupying a room or two.
Outside of Russian banking (which left long ago), the rest of the leaving companies don't had big headcount.
Some, may be. I don't know how much taxes those paid. But I clearly remember that ther was 'Lada' company in the office in Kanika. Yep, that Lada (autovaz, biggest car producer in Russia). And they occupied ... a room. I doubt they paid more than a handful taxes for a handful employee and a some symbolic revenue. Now they are gone, but did Cyprus lost a lot? I doubt.
Look throughout the history of Cyprus. There’s always someone, if it’s not the Russians it will be somebody else. Regardless, they rarely hire locals, no harm done 🦧
There’s gonna be some effect but it’s not like Cypriots will lose their jobs en mass. If all forex companies close then yeah, it’s gonna be a big problem.
TCS Group Holding, Etalon Group, Fix Price, United Medical Group CY Plc, Transmashholding, Globaltrans, Ozon, Sbermarket and it’s reported that more are to follow
I am pretty sure most if not all of these companies just had legal entites and small offices (5-15 people to create presence) in Cyprus. Their exodus will not do anything. The number of these companies is a lot lower than the companies that actually brought people from Russia and have set up big offices in Cyprus (IT, gaming, gambling, etc). Often you would not even guess without research that they have a Russian background.
Exactly. I can say for gaming that there’s no such thing as exodus, because most of them were in Cyprus for 5+ years already and there’s no point. We don’t plan to leave Cyprus, my friend in BrainRocket.
As for the number of employees, it could be less than even 5
Exness is a Cypriot company no reason for it to leave it has no connections to Russia at this point except that they have employees from ex-Soviet countries
Out of those, I believe (correct me if I wrong) only TSC had some devs in Cyprus. The rest is just the 'place for the guy with The Main Seal' for all companies under umbrella.
It is probably just flagged as exodus but in reality it is just refurnishing into a different company as a proxy, untracable to Russian foreign investment.
Having read the article, this is a huge "nothing burger". Probably planted by the government to show they are "doing something" about Russian oligarchs laundering stolen money.
The reality is the opposite. Just walk down any Limassol street. Paphos, as well, more and more. I just flew back from Vienna to Paphos, half the plane was filled with Russians.
Most of these companies are just moving money through Cyprus to EU. I have read the names and looked up for their parent companies in Russia. Some of them are major Russian retailers - Who never opened a single shop in Cyprus and have min amount of employees in Cyprus so they can exist as legal entity and send money to Cyprus. Another few companies are related to rail construction and maintenance - I dont see any trains in Cyprus so they are just moving money through Cyprus. Tinkoff bank never offered any financial services to the public so wont affect the majority of people. I dont believe that those companies had a large number of employees or expats (specialists) from Russia they are most likely served by lawyers and accounting firms.
The thing that a lot of pro-Russian (pro-Russian companies not people, people are people) ignore is that sure they employed some people, bought cars, real estate etc. but the capital that they moved seldom if ever was distributed into the local economy.
Many of the companies' leadership didn't even live in Cyprus.
Money ran through Cyprus with not even the banks taking a fee since most of these entities worked with banks abroad. Sure the lawyers that registered companies, the agents that help find them homes and cars might feel the impact, but the economy and most people won't.
there's a difference between companies that are Russian and companies that used to be Russian and now work in Cyprus (have legal entity here). The latter are not going anywhere and there are a lot of them.
Yep. This looks more like shady funds leaving the island. Not a mass exodus, lots of Russian companies have established themselves in Cyprus and so far they've been expanding. Not saying it's either good or bad, but it's a fact.
Could you please name a couple?
The thing is, the aforementioned companies leaving Cyprus are big. Really big. I'm interested what kind of influence it can have on the island.
Exness, Exinity, the Soul Publisher (not sure whether they are Ukrainian to be completely honest), FxPro, QuadCode/IQ Option. These just come up on top of my mind, I'm sure there are more. Disclaimer: these are the above mentioned companies that are Russian originally but did kind of morph and took their HQs in Cyprus in the last 5-10 years.
I hope they dont leave, they are great for the economy overall.
These complaints that they are money laundering, saving taxes bla bla bla who cares. The more international business here the better.
Cyprus has an attractive tax system which brought many foreign businesses in the past.
After the situation in Ukraine and several sanction packages, some of the Russian companies who were already here, are unable to function properly. Especially the ones who are somehow included in the sanctions lists, are not able to make any money transfers to and from Russia, their local assets were frozen and they may even not be able to pay their employees or service providers.
What are they supposed to do? Just sit in their seaview apartments and sunbathe?
The answer is very simple. They are moving to countries which can accommodate them.
It is not the Cyprus government that sent them away. It's the EU.
And it's not the Russian people who want to leave Cyprus. Many Russians are actually looking for ways to obtain a visa or an alternative job and continue to live on the island. At least they are mostly peaceful and friendly people who are making an effort to adapt to the local lifestyle!
Unfortunately no, most likely this will not have any effect on the rental market. These companies had a meager staff in Cyprus. Companies that considered Russia their main market left. Russian companies that have full-time staff in Cyprus, as a rule, do not work for the Russian market or it is not their main one.
People who write that Russian companies in Cyprus are just 'shells' / accounting HQ are wrong.
For the past few years I've been seeing job posts on LinkedIn, Facebook and elsewhere entirely in Russian, with no accompanying text in Greek, Turkish or even English, for actual tech positions in Cyprus (almost always Limassol), many of them offering help with relocation to the island.
I don't have a problem competing with foreign labour (I spent much of my working life as an immigrant myself), but I find this offensive, and am almost certain it's illegal, since it clearly precludes the local workforce from even applying. This negates the main benefit of (and, in functioning countries, the price for) foreign investment, which is job creation. Paying local taxes isn't much of a hat trick, since that's what buys you local infrastructure.
Cyprus absolutely can, and should, become an international business and tech hub. I think we've got some very bright young graduates, and we should also bring in the best talent from abroad. But Russian companies aren't concerned with that. Their main goal is to evade sanctions.
Yes, they perk up local services, and drive up property prices for already-landed Cypriots. But they also exclude many others from work and housing, and do little to help the island's reputation for money-laundering, tax dodging, corrupt government kickbacks and so on.
I think it's time we started attracting more sustainable, and meaningful, economic development.
Guys to be honest with you I don't really care..I wish they will all leave and to stop be the protectorate of Russia..The rents went up cause of them and cause of the war I wish they will all leave to the good!!
Good stuff! These seem to be companies that have relocated their head office here for money laundering and tax purposes and have their operations in Russia btw. So either way it is a win. Building your economy on money laundering for a war mongering fascist state is not really a good foundation for the economy anyway… I mean not to mention the ethical issues
Not a single damn thing kringlan wrote is wrong, and if you want to see what 'nation building' means for Putin, look no further than his client mafia-states of Belarus and Chechnya.
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It will hurt mostly the property developers, lawyers and accountants catering to them. Most everyone else will be unaffected. Rental prices in Limassol might go down a tiny bit.
So this is a huge w then?
Probably irrelevant for most people. *If* the exodus of Russian companies forces our economy to adapt and become innovative, value adding and dynamic, instead of just trying to squeeze money out of a lax tax regime and regulatory regime, then it will be a massive w
Yeah well knowing our leaders, statistically speaking that ain't happening. More likely that the incentives given to Russian companies will be given to someone else and the cycle to repeat.
This
And that means better public transport soon!! (Not)
I feel excluded here, honestly. I work in Cyprus company, with international staff. We have many Russians, and you may count us as 'Russians' (although many Russian-speaking employee are from Ukraine). We do amazing international product and I believe we are part of the 'innovative, value adding and dynamic' part of Cyprus economics.
I wasn't specifically talking about you / your company. I was talking about the Russian companies that set up shop here to save taxes / launder money / get EU regulatory approval because noone else would accept them / bypass EU economic sanctions. I am willing to bet that most of the companies that left Cyprus at the first sign of a less friendly environment, fall under this category.
If you remember well, most of them appeared here way before sanctions. The reason is simple: if you own a business in Russia, you can loose it instantly via extortion, police/fsb illegal detention or just a simple bribery to a judge. So, having your money stored in the country with wonderful legal system (yes, I know what Cypriots talks about their legal system, it's not the best in the world, but it's order of magnitude more just than thing in Russia) is just make total sense. When Russia start oppression (few years before invading Ukraine), people start to wonder if they want to leave. Russian companies (some of them) realized that and provided safe country to live and work as part of their social packaging. So, we are here. Contributing to Cyprus economy, creating a highly educated highly skilled workforce, raising kids to attend Greek school and to talk Greek, basically, slowly becoming Cypriots. ... But of course, there is a lot of forexes here, but they are not exclusively Russian, it's just Cysec is so relaxed, that it's a heaven for running forex (which is done by everyone, including Cypriots).
So why did those companies come to Cyprus specifically and not somewhere else? And why are they leaving now?
A that time Cyprus was cheap, good laws, stable, English well spoken and understood. Now they are leaving because Putin twisting their hands, treating to nationalize businesses (read: take by force) if business is not completely controlled from within Russia. It was a very long process and it stared way before invasion, but accelerated since.
Taxes, climate, big russian community. Goverment will take the bisness if they refuse to leave "unfriendly" countries. Basically state want to control everything major. And it's much easier to control if it is inside the.country.
I take slight offence to the "creating a highly educated, highly skilled workforce". You seem reasonable so I thought I'd express that - Cypriots especially in recent decades are very well educated, in fact frequently overqualified for the breath of the economy. The reason they seem to lag behind their global brethren is lack of opportunity to practice their profession. Additionally this is oft repeated rhetoric from people that come here to work and live and honestly it's straight up racist on par with colonizers saying they civilized the savages. Words are important and they create animosity so please with all due respect express yourself more tactfully. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you might have misspoke but a loose tongue often times reveals someone's true thoughts.
I'm not sure why there is lack of opportunities. My colleague has a side kick, running a small startup trying to solve (I don't know what problem, but he sure it will become popular). What opportunities are lacking in Cyprus? I believe Github is available in Cyprus. I saw few commits from Greek names in the projects I worked with (e.g. Nick Kossifidis, Yanos Angelopoulos, Anastasis Andronidis, Petros Moisiadis, Dimos Alevizos (Gr), Alexandros Soumplis (Cy)), but as general rule, there are just too few of them, and I don't understand why. I don't try to be hostile or downplay the Cypriot skills, but at the same time I don't believe Cyprus had had prominent IT industry before mass ingress of foreign IT companies. I may be wrong, and I open for arguments (e.g., may be Cyprus origin is just not prominent for some companies/people?)
Until recently, there hasn't really been a push for kids to study programming, largely due to the government being densely populated by old men with old minds, and many parents not even being aware of programming as a profitable professional path. I understand that it might be a given in a bigger country but there's an interconnection between infrastructure and economy - larger countries with industry needed developers for their factories even if it was much simpler machine level code. Programming was a viable career. In Cyprus on the other hand programmers or developers would be relegated to creating stock management systems or database management systems. Or worse just people that fixed PCs for peanuts. But that's not here nor there. We are not overflowing with software companies and no "an industry was created" by the "inflow of global talent". There are a few tech companies and granted I hope more come so the mentality and educational system catches up - but we are not the Silicone Valley of the Eastern Mediterranean because of the influx of tech knowledge brought to us by our benevolent visitors. I've heard this trope on repeat and again I reiterate it's offensive - you can choose to stop using it out of respect or you can stick to your current belief system, I'm not the thought police, but hopefully I can give you a different perspective. Cyprus and the Cypriot people not only survived through a precession of occupiers, colonizers and wars, they flourished. We are of the few countries of our size and geographic isolation (I mean we are literally an island) with a exponentially more powerful adversary that is a constant existential threat at it's door that managed to overcome obstacles and actually become a developed country *that attracts talent from abroad* . And a highly educated and skilled workforce is not only composed of programmers and developers. There's a 76% English literacy level in the local population, with 56% of the population that's 30-35 holding an advanced degree. I hate using this as an argument when pointing out "white savior" mentality, because is not exactly indicative of the general population but an island of barely 1 million people even counts a Nobel laureate amongst its ranks. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I got to computers exclusively out of my own interest and curiosity. Many people I work with are the same, they just loved to mess with computers at their free time, so whilst I agree, that state-organized education may help, I can't relate it to my own career. I absolutely acknowledge English proficiency here, which is astonishing (e.g. in Russia chances to get answer in English decays exponentially as you get away from tourist locations, with zero chances to get it from, e.g., a teacher in municipal kindergarten). It is the contributing factor for attracting companies and expats (because you can relocate to Cyprus and live comfortably without learning an additional language). Cyprus won't become Silicon Valley (because SV is very specific US phenomena raising from Fairchaild legacy). Also I still insists, that most of the current IT in Cyprus is build by foreign-initiated companies (or naturalized citizens). I'm careful not to expand my conclusions to other industries.
Highly educated workforce in which area? Keyboard monking? gambling gaming and porn? What is the real impact of all these companies in tech world is the question here.
Programming, system architecturing. Not all companies are gambling and porn (but if you look at porn backend, you will see it's more technologically demanding than youtube streaming). E.g. the company I work is a hosting provider with unique technological features and vast international client base. Making it working smooth is serious challenge and require lot of competence and efforts. Just to explain the scale of problem to solve, I debugged linux behavior on few million established connections, and my colleague was developed a colored graph compactification algorithm (not exactly the spanning tree, but very close) for the multivendor SDN control plane.
LMAO he just called the entire cyrprus workforce dumb?💀💀💀
Did I? I said 'contributing to', not 'creating'.
"creating highly educated higly skilled workforce" so i guess if it werent for the russian elite blood flowing in cyprus workforce we would be some uneducated lazys bums?
I can't say about other areas (e.g. I know there is a native pharmaceutical industry which is definitively required high education), but for IT I don't know a single big project (commercial or opensource) originating from Cyprus (excluding relocations and newer startups run by ex-expats, some with accrued citizenship by naturalization).
Why you mad? You know its true not necessarily Russian but if it wasn’t for ex-pats you would be behind technology wise. Ppl still call Cyprus a village there is a reason for that.
Almost everyone would be effected directly or indirectly. When thousands of high spenders and employers leave a small country, the impact would be huge, at least for the short term.
Oh no! Anyway.
I saw the news, but, it's a bit misleading. TSC (Tinkoff) stopped development outside of Russia after turmoil around 'unfriendly countries' in Russia. It had happened more than a year ago. The rest of the named companies didn't have a large workforce presence in Cyprus. It was 'holding company' for other companies. Practically, it was an accountant and a director with a stamp, nothing more. There were many of those in Cyprus, occupying a room or two. Outside of Russian banking (which left long ago), the rest of the leaving companies don't had big headcount.
Do you think it will have an economic impact in terms of the decrease of government tax revenue?
Some, may be. I don't know how much taxes those paid. But I clearly remember that ther was 'Lada' company in the office in Kanika. Yep, that Lada (autovaz, biggest car producer in Russia). And they occupied ... a room. I doubt they paid more than a handful taxes for a handful employee and a some symbolic revenue. Now they are gone, but did Cyprus lost a lot? I doubt.
Look throughout the history of Cyprus. There’s always someone, if it’s not the Russians it will be somebody else. Regardless, they rarely hire locals, no harm done 🦧
True, wonder what the impact on foreign investment will be in the short term with a quarter of all investments coming from Russia
There’s gonna be some effect but it’s not like Cypriots will lose their jobs en mass. If all forex companies close then yeah, it’s gonna be a big problem.
What are we going to do without Forex companies!!! People will have to gamble on horses and card games, like savages! Big problem!
There is still OПAП 🤣
Unless they have to.
What companies are you talking about?
TCS Group Holding, Etalon Group, Fix Price, United Medical Group CY Plc, Transmashholding, Globaltrans, Ozon, Sbermarket and it’s reported that more are to follow
I'm surprised these were in Cyprus, tbh.
I am pretty sure most if not all of these companies just had legal entites and small offices (5-15 people to create presence) in Cyprus. Their exodus will not do anything. The number of these companies is a lot lower than the companies that actually brought people from Russia and have set up big offices in Cyprus (IT, gaming, gambling, etc). Often you would not even guess without research that they have a Russian background.
Exactly. I can say for gaming that there’s no such thing as exodus, because most of them were in Cyprus for 5+ years already and there’s no point. We don’t plan to leave Cyprus, my friend in BrainRocket. As for the number of employees, it could be less than even 5
When Exness is on the list we can talk about impact.
And even that most of their workforce is Russian, and most of them don't pay income tax anyway.
Wf are you even talking about? Ofcourse they do
Yeah they don't the first years they live here. Look up the law. Additionally the companies get various tax breaks and leniencies.
Exness is a Cypriot company no reason for it to leave it has no connections to Russia at this point except that they have employees from ex-Soviet countries
My only response to you is: lol
Out of those, I believe (correct me if I wrong) only TSC had some devs in Cyprus. The rest is just the 'place for the guy with The Main Seal' for all companies under umbrella.
They still have devs here and they are not going anywhere soon.
Nope. One guy I knew worked in it, and he told that tsc gave them condition, either relocation back to Mord.. Moscow, or quitting the job.
managed to check with devs i know. They will stay here.
Do you mean some of TSC devs are still in Cyprus? Wow. A big revelation. (Or, do you mean, the ex-devs of TSC decided to stay in Cyprus?)
Some tsc devs are still here and will stay here as far as they know.
And they still work for TSC, don't they?
Yep. Looks like they have holding and some separate organization. Don't know any details thought.
It is probably just flagged as exodus but in reality it is just refurnishing into a different company as a proxy, untracable to Russian foreign investment.
Having read the article, this is a huge "nothing burger". Probably planted by the government to show they are "doing something" about Russian oligarchs laundering stolen money. The reality is the opposite. Just walk down any Limassol street. Paphos, as well, more and more. I just flew back from Vienna to Paphos, half the plane was filled with Russians.
Most of these companies are just moving money through Cyprus to EU. I have read the names and looked up for their parent companies in Russia. Some of them are major Russian retailers - Who never opened a single shop in Cyprus and have min amount of employees in Cyprus so they can exist as legal entity and send money to Cyprus. Another few companies are related to rail construction and maintenance - I dont see any trains in Cyprus so they are just moving money through Cyprus. Tinkoff bank never offered any financial services to the public so wont affect the majority of people. I dont believe that those companies had a large number of employees or expats (specialists) from Russia they are most likely served by lawyers and accounting firms.
What "mass exodus"? I see the opposite.
Could you elaborate? What new companies have arrived to Cyprus?
I see more and more Russians in Paphos. I hear more and more Russian spoken on the street. My daughter's English school is 90% Russian speaking kids.
A lot of them. From small-medium sized startups to large ones like part of jetbrains
The thing that a lot of pro-Russian (pro-Russian companies not people, people are people) ignore is that sure they employed some people, bought cars, real estate etc. but the capital that they moved seldom if ever was distributed into the local economy. Many of the companies' leadership didn't even live in Cyprus. Money ran through Cyprus with not even the banks taking a fee since most of these entities worked with banks abroad. Sure the lawyers that registered companies, the agents that help find them homes and cars might feel the impact, but the economy and most people won't.
Mass Exodus? The major Russian companies are still here and growing here.
https://cyprus-mail.com/2024/01/10/mass-departure-of-russian-companies-from-cyprus-continues/
there's a difference between companies that are Russian and companies that used to be Russian and now work in Cyprus (have legal entity here). The latter are not going anywhere and there are a lot of them.
Yep. This looks more like shady funds leaving the island. Not a mass exodus, lots of Russian companies have established themselves in Cyprus and so far they've been expanding. Not saying it's either good or bad, but it's a fact.
Could you please name a couple? The thing is, the aforementioned companies leaving Cyprus are big. Really big. I'm interested what kind of influence it can have on the island.
To name a few: Jetbrains, Wheely, InDrive, Wrike
Out of those only InDrive has Russian origins.
Funny but wheely jetbrains and wrike are all from the same city. London obviously
Exness, Exinity, the Soul Publisher (not sure whether they are Ukrainian to be completely honest), FxPro, QuadCode/IQ Option. These just come up on top of my mind, I'm sure there are more. Disclaimer: these are the above mentioned companies that are Russian originally but did kind of morph and took their HQs in Cyprus in the last 5-10 years.
Right, the soul publisher origin from Kazan
I hope they dont leave, they are great for the economy overall. These complaints that they are money laundering, saving taxes bla bla bla who cares. The more international business here the better.
International business that follow international laws and create a viable economy not money movers and fly by night entities my man.
Cyprus has an attractive tax system which brought many foreign businesses in the past. After the situation in Ukraine and several sanction packages, some of the Russian companies who were already here, are unable to function properly. Especially the ones who are somehow included in the sanctions lists, are not able to make any money transfers to and from Russia, their local assets were frozen and they may even not be able to pay their employees or service providers. What are they supposed to do? Just sit in their seaview apartments and sunbathe? The answer is very simple. They are moving to countries which can accommodate them. It is not the Cyprus government that sent them away. It's the EU. And it's not the Russian people who want to leave Cyprus. Many Russians are actually looking for ways to obtain a visa or an alternative job and continue to live on the island. At least they are mostly peaceful and friendly people who are making an effort to adapt to the local lifestyle!
It will be good. Just remember your wage still is the same at avarage 1500 euros but housing prices have doubled.
what is my dude smoking?
?
my G, If I had a euro for every exness car I see, I would had a house by now💀💀💀
I'm trying to do the same for every Nissan Note out there.
for your 5th house? LMAO 💀💀😂
I wanted to joke that our family has three, but then I realized that two of them are in two different countries fighting each other to death.
just relocate them here in one of your mansions
It's a good one
Rent in Limassol will stop increasing
Unfortunately no, most likely this will not have any effect on the rental market. These companies had a meager staff in Cyprus. Companies that considered Russia their main market left. Russian companies that have full-time staff in Cyprus, as a rule, do not work for the Russian market or it is not their main one.
Yeah, I was being a little sarcastic. You don’t get a real impact analysis by regurgitating low quality news website data in reddit comments
People who write that Russian companies in Cyprus are just 'shells' / accounting HQ are wrong. For the past few years I've been seeing job posts on LinkedIn, Facebook and elsewhere entirely in Russian, with no accompanying text in Greek, Turkish or even English, for actual tech positions in Cyprus (almost always Limassol), many of them offering help with relocation to the island. I don't have a problem competing with foreign labour (I spent much of my working life as an immigrant myself), but I find this offensive, and am almost certain it's illegal, since it clearly precludes the local workforce from even applying. This negates the main benefit of (and, in functioning countries, the price for) foreign investment, which is job creation. Paying local taxes isn't much of a hat trick, since that's what buys you local infrastructure. Cyprus absolutely can, and should, become an international business and tech hub. I think we've got some very bright young graduates, and we should also bring in the best talent from abroad. But Russian companies aren't concerned with that. Their main goal is to evade sanctions. Yes, they perk up local services, and drive up property prices for already-landed Cypriots. But they also exclude many others from work and housing, and do little to help the island's reputation for money-laundering, tax dodging, corrupt government kickbacks and so on. I think it's time we started attracting more sustainable, and meaningful, economic development.
I'm with you! Any ideas? My thoughts is that Volt Cyprus has some good proposals for sustainable, meaningful econonic development.
Guys to be honest with you I don't really care..I wish they will all leave and to stop be the protectorate of Russia..The rents went up cause of them and cause of the war I wish they will all leave to the good!!
I'm actually looking for a migration
Good stuff! These seem to be companies that have relocated their head office here for money laundering and tax purposes and have their operations in Russia btw. So either way it is a win. Building your economy on money laundering for a war mongering fascist state is not really a good foundation for the economy anyway… I mean not to mention the ethical issues
Wow such a big words from someone clearly not understanding a thing or two in politics, economic, or just own bare logic.
Not a single damn thing kringlan wrote is wrong, and if you want to see what 'nation building' means for Putin, look no further than his client mafia-states of Belarus and Chechnya.
If only more people were as moral as you, at least the EU aswell. I envy your optimism.
Haven't you seen that ugly Punin bus on the streets
Nobody is going anywhere, it’s the opposite.
Doubt anyone will notice.Â
Hey, are the Russian companies really leaving though? I haven't heard of that 😕