By John Helmer, Moscow While Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska are hard at work changing the British courts’ interpretation of the law on corruption, Vladimir Antonov has come along to challenge the British law on asylum and extradition. Antonov, along with his Lithuanian partner Raimondas Baranauskas, were arrested in London on November 23, […]

by John Helmer - Monday, December 12th, 2011
No Comments »

Krissy, November 1994-December 9, 2011

by John Helmer - Sunday, December 11th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow On November 29, following up Russian media reports and after an investigation lasting a week, the Moscow Times published the following article, which speaks for itself. A week later, on December 7, the newspaper’s editor, Andrew McChesney, sent this letter:

by John Helmer - Saturday, December 10th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow BHP Billiton (BHP), the world’s dominant producer of manganese, last week slashed the price of manganese for delivery to China, the world’s dominant consumer, by 14%, arousing the suspicion that the Big Australian is aiming to drive rival producers from the business, and when Chinese steelmaking is expected to revive next […]

by John Helmer - Friday, December 9th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow After the episode of the Louis Vuitton fountain-pen given in San Francisco in friendship, not favour, Dmitry Rybolovlev (left) has redirected his generosity to another seaport, this time Monaco. There the welcome appears to have been decidedly warmer than he got in California, where Rybolovlev said he was thinking of investing […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, December 8th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow The relationship between taste and power is what Karl Marx would have called dialectical; for today’s Russian oligarchs that’s a red flag – in the race track, not the Marxist sense of the term. The oligarchs don’t mind showing off their taste in foreign places and foreign newspapers; inside Russia they […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow When Oleg Deripaska was completing his takeover of Russian Aluminium (Rusal) by buying out his partner, Roman Abramovich, the two of them agreed to arrange legal advice on the transaction from one of the leading mergers and acquisitions lawyers in London. But after she began probing the deal on her suspicion […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow The Financial Times, a London newspaper, recommends that under your Christmas tree you put a book called Snowdrops by A.D. Miller, who was the Moscow correspondent of The Economist between 2004 and 2007. According to the recommendation, “it’s a sinister, seductive read that paints a murky moral portrait of the new […]

by John Helmer - Monday, December 5th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Monkeys throw their excrement at their enemies – this is well-known among zoologists. But it happens only when monkeys are caged, not in the wild. The reason for this is obvious — free-ranging monkeys instinctively run away from their shit as quickly as possible, to evade predators. But if they are […]

by John Helmer - Saturday, December 3rd, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Michael Wilson, a Kazakhstan-based lawyer specializing in mining and natural resources, has won a judgement from Australia’s highest court, reinstating a December 2009 award of more than $11 million. The five-year record of litigation has nailed three Australian lawyers — John Emmott, Robert Nicholls, and David Slater – for nicking clients, […]

by John Helmer - Friday, December 2nd, 2011
No Comments »