Profits first, ethics second: Foreign corporations financing Russian imperialism’s war of aggression

Written by: Nick G. on 14 January 2025

A report just released by three Ukrainian organisations has revealed the foreign corporations whose taxes on earnings in Russia are helping to fund Russian imperialism’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

Non-Russian companies are contributing to Russia’s war on Ukraine through the taxes they pay, the supply chains they support and the technology and training they provide. This report focuses on one specific angle: multinational company revenue and taxes associated with operations within Russia.

The Report found that in 2023, 1600 multinational corporations played a pivotal role in strengthening Russia’s economy, contributing to its illegal war of aggression in Ukraine.  They paid an estimated $21.6 billion in total tax, bringing the total estimated taxes paid to $41.6 billion since the full-scale invasion in 2022. $41.6 billion is equivalent to just under one-third of Russia’s estimated military budget for 2025,

According to the Report, banks were the largest contributors to Russian tax revenue. Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), in particular, was found to be the largest single corporate taxpayer in Russia by far in 2023. RBI’s Russian tax contributions in 2023 totalled $491m - more than twice those of the second-largest corporate taxpayer, China’s Chery Automobile, and more than the tax contributions of all other international banks put together. 

On a country basis, American firms generated the largest total revenues in Russia and emerged as the Kremlin’s most substantial contributors through profit taxes, paying $1.2 billion in 2023. Germany follows, with its companies paying $692.5 million in profit taxes to Russia in the same year.

Although many foreign corporations pulled out of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, Chinese companies moved to capture market share and boost revenues, particularly in the automotive and technology sectors. Yet despite gains in these areas, it is still companies headquartered in G7 and EU countries who were cumulatively the highest profit taxpayers in Russia in 2023, representing 16 of the top 20 contributing countries. Companies from China - which is considered as a ‘friendly’ country by Russia - reported higher revenues than those from Germany, but their profit tax contributions remain lower. 

Chinese companies in the Top 20 List of foreign tax-paying corporations in Russia were Chery Automobile, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and Haval Motor. Together their tax on profits in 2023 amounted to $328m, still lower than the Austrian bank’s payments.

China’s 3 companies in the Top 20 compared with 8 from the US.

Revelations of US, European and Chinese firms supporting Russian aggression through their taxes on profits in Russia are a stark reminder of companies that invested in Nazi Germany and continued operating after the beginnings of Nazi aggression and the outbreak of World War 2.

They included Ford and General Motors, both owned by anti-semitic admirers of Hitler, Coca-Cola, IBM and IT&T. Ford factories and those of GM’s German subsidiary Opal, switched to war production after 1939. After the war, GM was compensated $32 million by the U.S. government because its German factories were bombed by U.S. forces during the war. A large sum was also paid to Ford, although the exact amount was never revealed, and despite the fact that slave labour from concentration camps was used at its Ford-Werke plant.

Imperialist finance capital, throughout its history, has always placed profits over ethics. It may be one thing for corporations to pay taxes to their “own” aggressor nation, but it is scaping the bottom of the barrel of ethics when they work with and support governments to which their own are opposed or actually fighting.

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