Frequently asked questions

#161: Why does the database include Russian company data from 2022?

Category: Policy · Last updated: · Permalink

Following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government has passed special rules regarding the reporting duties of entities targeted by international restrictive measures. In effect, this means that a small set of Russian companies - those targeted by international sanctions - have been enabled to falsify the records they file with the company registry.

For OpenSanctions, this leads to the paradox situation that the official EGRUL registry, which is operated by the Russian Federal Tax Service (FNS), is no longer a trustworthy source on the structure, control and ownership of that specific group of companies - the subset we are most interested in.

In order to compensate for this risk of company information blackout, we are currently processing EGRUL data dated January 1, 2022 - a snapshot dated before the full-scale invasion and the full disengagement of the Russian economy from the rule of law.

In the future, we also plan to additionally introduce current (2025) EGRUL data alongside the 2022 "trusted" version of the registry to represent both the historical and current state of the registry.

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