By John Helmer, Moscow If, and it remains a big if, Victor Rashnikov’s Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine (MMK) is not clandestinely behind the attempt last week by an unknown shareholder to block the completion of MMK’s proposed takeover of Australian iron-ore prospector, Flinders Mines, then a ruling yesterday by Judge N.A.Bulavintseva is the first sign. According […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, April 10th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow To those who listen, it has been made clear that President-elect Vladimir Putin and his closest policy advisor, Igor Sechin, believe that what they need to know about the oligarchs’ misconduct and mismanagement of Russia’s resource concessions, they don’t need to ask the Federal Security Service (FSB) or the Foreign Intelligence […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, April 8th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow The bun has been in the oven for Victor Rashnikov for six months now. But did he go to President-elect Vladimir Putin and ask permission to put it there? It seems not. Has he been told to pull it out without burning everybody (except for the Australians)? Maybe. For the previous […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, April 8th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Among Russians Egorova and Egorov are pretty common names, second only in circulation to Ivanova and Ivanov. That puts it up in the ranks of the Smiths and the Browns. If there really is a litigant named Elena Nikolaevna Egorova; if she owns a minuscule bloc of shares in Magnitogorsk Metallurgical […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, April 4th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Why would Roman Abramovich and his pals decide to buy a small steelmaker in South Africa at a price that would add to their debt by the very same amount they offloaded last year on to share buyers, so as to keep their debt-to-earnings ratio down, and their bankers sweet? That’s […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow On October 12, 2004, Sergei Frank, a former federal Minister of Transport, was appointed chief executive of Sovcomflot, Russia’s largest oil tanker company and one of the top five in the world. Frank confirmed, said the company on its website, “that the Company’s management will take all necessary steps to enhance […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Rupert Murdoch has produced this week an item for the clinical casebook on the brain-challenged. The criminal investigations now under way against him, his son James, his senior executives at News Corporation, company lawyers, and hired hands in the UK, the US and Australia are, he tweeted, nothing more than “every […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, April 1st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine (MMK), a publicly listed shareholding company controlled by Victor Rashnikov, says that in the first two months of this year, it has not cut back on production of steel. “Everything is fine and we now have growth,” Yelena Evstigneyeva, MMK’s spokesman told CRU Steel News. She was responding […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, March 29th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska’s courtroom defence against the multi-billion dollar claim by his former patron and business partner, Mikhail Chernoy (Michael Cherney) collapsed into lawyer malfeasance and retraction of charges in federal US district court in New York last week. A leak to the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, published on March 26, […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Now we move on from the lesson of how to be victorious over big people and bullies when still small —that’s for getting through the daytimes with ВЛАДИМИР ВИЗАНТИЙСКИЙ – to the lesson of how to write a short sentence and say everything that must be said at the same time. […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
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