By John Helmer, Moscow For the first time Alrosa, the state-owned diamond miner, has come out in public and said it wants to buy Grib, the only commercially developed Russian diamond mine owned by LUKoil and its chief executive, Vagit Alekperov. Why it should say so now, when earlier announcements by Alrosa have veiled the […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, December 10th, 2013
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Russian justice being what is, it is exceptional when the chief executive of a company owned by Oleg Deripaska (right) is arrested and carried off to prison on charges of fraud. As the days lengthen through which Deripaska’s man must spend behind bars – 16 as of today — interrogated by […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, December 8th, 2013
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Victor Pinchuk, the owner of Interpipe, the Ukrainian steelmaker which defaulted on its debts on November 1, has called his first-ever public business meeting. The date is December 9, and the meeting will be telephonic. Deutsche Bank, which is acting as trustee for Interpipe’s $200 million Eurobond issue, is promising to […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, December 5th, 2013
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Following a fresh investigation of its business practices in the former Soviet Union, TeliaSonera, the Stockholm-based telecommunications company, reported Friday that it has dismissed four senior executives, including the chief financial officer and the head of its mobile telephone division. A company statement claims that the objective of the investigation was […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow According to Colin Russell, an Australian who was the radioman on board the Greenpeace vessel, Arctic Sunrise, he’s “a good man”. Arrested by Russian coast guards after barricading himself in the radio room on September 19, he was imprisoned in Murmansk and St. Petersburg, until he was granted bail and released […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, December 1st, 2013
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow In the world of mules there are no rules (so Ogden Nash wrote last century). In selling $50 billion worth of nuclear reactors, there are a few. Sergei Kirienko, the prime minister in charge of the Russian government’s default on its treasury bonds and other financial destruction in 1998, is no […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, November 28th, 2013
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Interpipe, the Ukrainian pipemaker owned by Victor Pinchuk (left), son-in-law of ex-President Leonid Kuchma (centre, right), has released its first official acknowledgement that it is in default on $106 million of debt owed to its banks. In a statement yesterday on the company website, Interpipe said negotiations are under way with […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, November 27th, 2013
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow By releasing on bail all but one of thirty Greenpeace protesters charged for an attack on the offshore Russian oil platform Prirazlomnaya in September, Russian prosecutors and a St. Petersburg court have pre-empted and defeated Greenpeace and the Dutch Government. Greenpeace and the Dutch had applied for “provisional measures” from the […]

by John Helmer - Monday, November 25th, 2013
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Russia’s state-owned tanker company Sovcomflot has reported third-quarter and nine-month financial results showing that it continues to lose fleet operating revenues and run at a loss. In the nine months to September 30, the company says its time-charter equivalent (TCE) revenues were $657.2 million, down 1.6% on the same period of […]

by John Helmer - Friday, November 22nd, 2013
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska’s (image right) associates inside Rusal say the company is so short of cash, the chief executive has no alternative but to squeeze the President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon (left), and threaten to publish details of his offshore bank accounts, unless he comes across with almost $350 million. But Rahmon, […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, November 21st, 2013
No Comments »