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By John Helmer, Moscow United Company Rusal, the state aluminium monopoly controlled by Oleg Deripaska (right), has failed in a bid to ward off billion-dollar sanctions from Alpha Conde (centre), the President of Guinea, with an offer to start a cheap, new bauxite mine three years from now. Sources in Conakry, the capital of the […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow In a decision announced last week, the US Department of Commerce did Victor Pinchuk, owner of Interpipe, the Ukraine’s leading pipemaker and exporter, a favour worth between $6 million and $9 million per annum for the next three years. At the same time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has ordered the […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow In the Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, elocution professor Henry Higgins fools an East European expert on spotting impostors. But believing he’s been fooled himself by his protégée, Eliza Doolittle, Higgins sings this lament to himself: “Men are so honest, so thoroughly square; Eternally noble, historically fair; Who, when you win, […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow When it comes to Trojan horses, who better than the Government of Greece to judge. The Trojan Horse that’s meant is Leonid Lebedev (lead image), the three-term, 12-year Federation Council senator representing the Republic of Chuvashia. Lebedev claims to be a billionaire with control of a conglomerate called Sintez. Its cash […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow If Andrei Goncharenko paid £43 million for an asset worth no more than half as much, he has set something of a Russian record for business acumen. And he might well have kept that acumen secret, if not for a group of squabbling Englishmen wanting commissions for arranging the deal, and […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow A court in The Netherlands has dismissed a fraud claim for more than $800 million by Andrei Melnichenko against Alexander Mashkevich and the two other Kazakh owners of International Mineral Resources for lack of evidence. The 11-page judgement was issued by the District Court of Amsterdam on June 25. Three judges, […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow In a unanimous three-judge ruling issued on Friday, the UK Court of Appeal has rejected a claim from Novoship, the state shipping company which is part of the Sovcomflot group, for recovery of more than $243 million in profits and interest. Novoship had claimed the money was earned corruptly by vessel […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Russian dairy producers have filed for protection from pseudo-cheese exported in growing volumes from Ukraine through customs checkpoints in the Belgorod region. According to Soyuzmoloko, the Russian dairy producers’ association, Ukrainian exporters have been cutting their cheese shipments across the border, and more than doubling the volume of the substitutes, camouflaging […]