Voucher Proves There Is Life After Death

A week after its official funeral, the Russian privatization voucher is still very much alive and it is fetching record prices at stock exchanges.There are a lot of good reasons why that should be the case, primarily because federal and local officials have extended limited use of the voucher beyond its expiry date of June 30. But neither investment analysts nor privatization officials believe this to be the true cause of the phenomenal leap in the voucher's market price. They see it instead as evidence of undetected shenanigans by auction centers and factory managers who failed to turn in used "checks" to the State Property committee for destruction."They failed to turn in the vouchers either because of negligence or because they re-used them and lost them somewhere along the way," said Alexander Sochilov of the Analaiz investment analysis company."Now they want those vouchers at any price so they can turn them in."On Friday trading volume was light at the Russian Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange, with about 300 vouchers sold in the first hour of trading. But they fetched just under 50,000 rubles ($25) a piece, up from 30,000-35,000 in June. On Wednesday and Thursday the voucher closed just under 70,000 rubles.Sochilov said auction centers sometimes illegally accepted money from bidders in place of vouchers, promising they would buy the vouchers later and turn them in to be destroyed. Some failed to do that, so now they owe vouchers to the State Property Committee.Olga Tankova, head of the voucher circulation department at the State Property Committee, said she did not rule out that possibility. She also said it was possible that factory managers illegally re-used vouchers collected during closed auctions, at which only the workers of a factory could acquire shares in it. The re-used vouchers remained unaccounted for, so the managers were now buying new ones at stock exchanges."Reality is much more versatile than we imagine," she said. "People will always look for loopholes and find them. We still need a lot of time to find out how people used the checks."Tankova said that although government officials have indicated their willingness to prolong the voucher privatization campaign, few businessmen would take the risk of buying vouchers for further investment in the present, unclear, legal situation."I tend to believe that this is people trying to cover old debts rather than businessmen betting that check privatization will continue," she said.Dealers bore out the theory that people were buying the checks to make up for missing vouchers they failed to return to the State Property Committee."Everyone has to account for the checks they're supposed to have collected and they don't have the checks," said a voucher dealer who identified himself as "Sam." He added that business had been good all week but fell off slightly on Friday because of the weekend exodus to the countryside.One man bidding for 40 vouchers Friday gave up when another buyer offered 50,000 rubles for each check. "I've got some checks missing that I have to cover for," he said when asked why he was interested in vouchers.