Cargo aircraft leased to East Line to pay debts

Published: 5/31/2000

Domodedovo Airlines (DA) has had to lease its three Il-76T cargo aircraft to East Line Airlines for a year in an effort to raise money to meet it extensive liabilities, says Dmitry Shiryaev, flight director with the airline. According to him, the Russian MoD has so far paid none of the 239m rubles of debts to the airline for carrying armed forces personnel. Shiryaev said that despite Putin's order to provide 50m rubles for DA in January, the MoD has been unable make payment because the military budget payments have been frozen and there has been no resolution of the MoD's huge debts to commercial airlines, particularly DA. According to DA, these debts were the main cause for the airline's inability to pay its debts of 30m rubles owed to the Federal Budget. This led to the seizure of DA's accounts by the tax police earlier year and was followed by the cancellation of the airline's flights to Russia's Far East. Only with the intervention of Vladimir Putin did the tax police agree to allow DA more time to pay off its debts, which was achieved through a loan from a number of commercial banks.

Article ID: 1824