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By John Helmer, Moscow The state media organ British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is preparing a television broadcast on Oleg Deripaska and asking journalists in Moscow to help.  Deripaska is the Russian state aluminium monopolist. The cue for the BBC is the new round of sanctions which the US Treasury says it is preparing,   and the […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow The Central Bank of Russia’s plan for saving two of Russia’s leading non-state retail banks, National Bank Trust (aka Trust Bank, NBT) and Otkritie Bank, is unravelling because the two key witnesses to the wrongdoing which caused the banks to collapse are now under investigation for alleged wrongdoing themselves. On February […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow The Central Bank of Russia has authorized Suleiman Kerimov to take shareholding control of Vozrozhdenie Bank from Dmitry and Alexei Ananiev. The negotiation between Kerimov and the Central Bank occurred late last week. The Ananievs were absent abroad. Eight weeks earlier, on December 15, the Central Bank had ousted them from […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow The three types of power which decide the fate of regimes are force, fraud and subversion; that’s to say, arms, money, media. The Roman Empire was good at using small armies to take on much bigger ones;  by adeptly concentrating their force they managed to rule much larger large territories than […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow The Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra (lead image, left) resigned his post this week after admitting he had publicly and repeatedly lied that he had met with President Vladimir Putin when he had not done so.   The Dutch press, which initiated the investigation exposing the lie, reports that in his […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska (left) has issued a statement decrying a text and YouTube broadcast  published last week which allege improprieties on a fishing trip off the Norwegian coast when Deripaska hosted Sergei Prikhodko  (right). The trip occurred in August 2016. At the time, Prikhodko was Deputy Prime Minister and head of the […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow What is more alluring than a Swiss smile – and I don’t mean the ones displayed by the girls around Cornavin railway station in Geneva.   The question which Russian visitors, residents, and hopeful residents are asking is whether the Swiss have decided to abjure the smile and impose an informal […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Dmitry Pumpyansky’s (lead images) TMK, Russia’s largest steel pipemaking company, has announced that it is withdrawing its initial public offering (IPO) of shares in its US subsidiary, which had been planned for later this month on the New York Stock Exchange.  The announcement has appeared in the western media, but not […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow ‘All politics is local’ was something Tip O’Neill, the late Massachusetts congressman and Speaker of the US House of Representatives, used to say. ‘A week is a long time in politics’ was something Harold Wilson, the late British Prime Minister, said at about the same time.  This week,  you have several […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Steven (Steve) Mnuchin (lead image, right), a New York banker who has spent a year being Secretary of the US Treasury, is worse at dissembling his racket than his better-known American peers at racketeering,  Alphonse (Al) Capone of the Chicago Outfit (left) and Charles (Lucky) Luciano of the New York Commission […]