My fiancée wants to renew her International passport so it is fresh before she gets her visa. When she went to the office they told her there is a new law taking effect 1 January regarding credit. She did not understand them 100%. She believes she heard they will not issue a International passport if you are behind even one payment on any revolving or installment type credit. Guess they are afraid of people maxing out credit and then skipping the Motherland! This is an issue you might want to look into yourselves and warn your ladies about!

Wow. Imagine if they did that in the United States? Nobody would ever leave the country again. lol.

On a serious note, I'm both surprised and not surprised by this news. Some days, I could swear that various Russian agencies never talk to one another under any circumstances, and so it's rather incredible to me that the government would be coordinating with business to prevent this type of fraud.

On the other hand, I'm not surprised because I've found that Russians (at least those in Ivanovo) are not very trusting of people outside their closest inner circles. I couldn't even get Internet service installed in my apartment without dragging the landlord to the DSL company to verify that he's allowing me to subscribe to this service and that they have permission to piggyback their signal over the existing telephone lines. And any time I need to make a change to the account, I have to personally visit their office. So, based on trust, it's not at all surprising that the Russians would look carefully at anybody looking to leave.

I hope Alla's debt wasn't too high to be paid off quickly. Did they happen to say how long it'd take for the Russian version of a credit report to be updated, reflecting her zero-balance?

Z

From what I understand, it is not a zero balance that is required, only that you are not in the rears. It is not like a credit report with some crazy score. The Bank (creditor) places a notation on your internal passport number in a database. So, if you try to gain an International passport, it will state these citizen must catch up first. This is what she believes so far.

Just out of curiosity, assuming Alla doesn't achieve a zero balance before leaving, how would she keep up with her payments? I've yet to see any business (at least not in the Ivanovo area) that takes any form of payment other than cash, credit card [with 100 forms of ID], or direct payment at one of the local banks. Is her creditor setup to receive wire transfers or something?

Z

PS: If this is off topic, let's continue in another thread - although I expect methods of payment from afar may be relevant to readers facing similar issues now or in the future.

I would say we are very on topic!

Well sending payments would not be a problem. We can easily send her mother the money who can pay the card. Alla works for a piece of the action with her company. So she uses her cards to cash advance until her company collects and pays her. Knowing my Alla, she will probably convince her employer to advance her the money if she is behind. Then they will not have to pay her back on any deals collected after she leaves.

This is a horrible law just waiting on a scam.

Imagine if the local mafia boss now controls a "financial company" capable of placing that notation on any young lady's passport number. He could very easily extort money from her (and her "rich" western fiance) before she's allowed to leave the country. Historically, it hasn't been too hard to get a govt. official or two on board with this type of scam, thus making it perfectly legal.

What the hell are they doing?

And yes, if getting visas was about credit in the U.S., I would've been like all these poor saps here "I'm going to Gatlinburg for vacation!"