By John Helmer, Moscow According to the Kremlin website, on July 11 President Dmitry Medvedev met with “representatives of major private and state-owned companies”. The Kremlin website has identified them:

by John Helmer - Thursday, July 14th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow If Vnesheconombank (VEB), the state bailout bank chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, really has agreed to pay $5.3 billion for the 80% control shareholding of Raspadskaya, the coking coalminer, then this is going to be Roman Abramovich’s lucky day. His second lucky day, if to count the September 2005 transaction […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, July 13th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow During this week’s Washington, DC, visit by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a mid-level State Department official appears to be the key to whether Oleg Deripaska’s lobbying campaign to recover his US visa will succeed. Dan Russell, who served in the US Embassy in Moscow between 2003 and 2008, is now […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 12th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow As Canadian stock market regulators open their first-ever investigation into listing practices by Russian companies trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the chief executive of High River Gold (HRG) has warned shareholders against reading reports appearing on this website. A Canadian shareholder of HRG has received an email letter from Konstantin […]

by John Helmer - Monday, July 11th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow Brian Gilbertson, the leading South African mining entrepreneur, has launched a new stage of his investment in the Faberge jewellery marque with the first release for sale since 1917 of Faberge jewelled eggs, designed by the family of the original Russian court jeweller, Peter Carl Faberge. Four of the eggs, including […]

by John Helmer - Friday, July 8th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow The greatest of the great Canadians, Glenn Gould was, by his own admission, a lover of driving big, fast cars on the open road. When criticized for his rule-breaking, he acknowledged: “I know I’m at fault for driving through red lights occasionally. But look at the number of times I’ve stopped […]

by John Helmer - Friday, July 8th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow Naivety is not what the British establishment can ever be accused of. Certainly never towards Rupert Murdoch, whose British nickname has been the Dirty Digger — a reference to his business practices and to his Australian nationality. So yesterday in the House of Commons, when the Conservative Party and Labor Party […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, July 7th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow If you’re feeling peckish, but the price of fish is too high to swallow, whom do you call? Gennady Timchenko (right image), that’s who – the man who has settled with several English newspapers out of court that he’s not a friend of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and benefits commercially in […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska’s EN+ holding has been eliminated from the international bidding for Tavan Tolgoi, Mongolia’s largest mining project. Instead, according to US diplomatic sources, the Mongolian Government has decided to award shares in the project to the Russian Railways consortium, an American coalminer, and a Chinese group.

by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow Russia’s state pipeline company Transneft went public yesterday morning with an attack on the Prime Minister of Bulgaria for dragging his feet over the trans-Balkan pipeline proposed between Burgas and Alexandropouli, on the Aegean Sea. Transneft chief executive Nikolai Tokarev was reported by Moscow news wires as saying: “God save anyone […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
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