There is a scam among taxi drivers working at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. With his passenger on board and after taking the fare into the city, the taxi driver starts his engine. But he hasn’t gone beyond the airport boundary when he simulates a technical failure and announces the car can’t go any further. He then […]

by John Helmer - Friday, November 22nd, 2002
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It is rare for a local investment bank to expose an entire commercial market as a compound of tax-avoidance schemes, phony revenue statements, paper transfers and intentionally misleading valuations. But that is what the United Financial Group (UFG) manages to do for the Russian insurance market with a new report titled “Russia’s Insurance Industry: Enter […]

by John Helmer - Friday, November 15th, 2002
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With grain exports likely to reach 8 million metric tons this year, Russia’s ports admit they are having trouble coping. This is forcing the government in Moscow into opting between the policy of favoring Russian over Ukrainian and Baltic ports, or letting the surplus of grain eat into farm prices, farmer’s incomes, and farm planting […]

by John Helmer - Friday, November 1st, 2002
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When there is trouble, Russians hide and hoard whatever they can. And since there has always been trouble in Russia, Russians are the world’s biggest hoarders. In the 1930s, one of the legendary heroes manufactured by Kremlin propagandists was Pavlik Morozov, a young Pioneer who denounced his own father, a peasant landowner, for hoarding grain […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, October 27th, 2002
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In 1708 George Friedrich Handel was just starting out on his brilliant career as a composer, when he spent a fortunate year in Rome. Fortunate because a wealthy Roman commissioned him to compose music for regular performance on Sundays at the patron’s home. One of the most beautiful pieces Handel wrote at the time – […]

by John Helmer - Friday, October 18th, 2002
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Russian steelmakers say that an anti-dumping investigation now underway in South Africa is unfair to the Russian steel industry, and should be modified by the granting of full market economy status to Russia when the two governments’ trade officials meet in Pretoria next month. The South Africans have responded by branding Russian tariff penalties on […]

by John Helmer - Friday, October 4th, 2002
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When Louis XIV was dying in 1715, he had ruled for 72 years, the longest period of absolute one-man rule in the history of Europe to that time, or in the time that followed. So long in fact, that almost all the lawful heirs to the throne of France were dead – Louis’ son, his […]

by John Helmer - Friday, September 20th, 2002
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Nuri Said was the puppet prime minister of Iraq during the 1950s, when the British pulled all the strings in Baghdad. When revolutionary Iraqi officers toppled him in 1958, his mangled corpse was dragged through the streets – much as President George Bush and his colleagues are thinking of doing to Saddam Hussein, if they […]

by John Helmer - Friday, September 6th, 2002
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In 1701 an unusual cargo arrived from the Netherlands in the Spanish port of Cadiz. Documents indicated it was chocolate for the head of the Society of Jesus, a powerful and secretive organization in Catholic Spain. The cargo was so heavy that a customs officer decided to inspect it. Inside, he found closely packed bars […]

by John Helmer - Friday, August 30th, 2002
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Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov recently summoned Russia’s chief insurance regulator, Konstanin Pylov, and told him to mind his mouth. The subject of the prime minister’s concern was the World Trade Organization’s demand that Russia dismantle its restrictions on foreign insurance companies in the Russian market. The regulator, who is officially head of the Department of […]

by John Helmer - Friday, August 23rd, 2002
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