At the Institute of world economy and international relations (IMEMO) at the request of the Eurasian development Bank (EDB) under the guidance of the author of this article since the end of 2011 implemented a series of research projects on the study of actual FDI localization Russian companies. The results of these investigations allow to clarify the real scale of the Russian FDI, by determining the degree of reliability of the data of the Bank of Russia. In addition, the statistics of the IMEMO RAS provides an opportunity to test a number of scientific hypotheses – for example, about the role of the bystander effect in the geography of foreign investments. Currently, we have gathered information on the accumulated direct investments by approximately 700 Russian projects in the countries of Europe, Central Asia and East Asia, including Turkey and the countries of Transcaucasia, and Vietnam).