Russia’s new Ratings Agency (ACRA) replaces the major international agencies (Moody’s, S&P, Fitch) for the purposes of assessing credit quality and assigning credit ratings to domestic borrowers in Russia. This discussion paper contextualizes this development as part of the broader trend in corporate leveraging in emerging markets and the risks to fiscal oversight created by corporate leveraging, while noting that both sanctions against Russia as well as depressed oil prices have catalyzed the current ACRA into being, as part of a strategy to address credit quality concerns and opacity in fiscal oversight of corporate leverage while the macroeconomic strains from extractive industry constraints loom large. This enriches the discussion of corporate leveraging in BRICS in light of the dramatic changes that this emerging market cohort is witnessing at present (2016).