By John Helmer, Moscow Alrosa, the Russian diamond miner, signed an agreement on Wednesday [November 28] to supply selected rough diamonds to Tiffany of New York. Signing with Alrosa chief executive Fyodor Andreyev was Andrew Hart, president of Laurelton Diamonds, a Belgian subsidiary of Tiffany, as well as executive vice president of Tiffany Corporation in […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, November 29th, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow After more than forty years, the last great Soviet state secret is out. And in its wake, a sensitive Chinese state secret, too. Russian geologists reported over the weekend that the Popigai crater on the border between the Krasnoyarsk and Sakha regions of north eastern Siberia, formed by the 100-kilometre wide […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, September 20th, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow When a powerful Kremlin official recently confided that he values the usefulness of UK High Court proceedings involving some of Russia’s wealthiest businessmen, he probably wasn’t thinking of the case which concluded on Friday with a judgement issued by Justice Sir Geoffrey Vos. The Russian official was intimating that the British […]

by John Helmer - Monday, July 2nd, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Alrosa has announced new strategic targets until the end of 2021, following this week’s meeting of the Supervisory Board, as Alrosa’s board of directors is known. How much of the projected growth will depend on Alrosa getting the Kremlin to persuade Vagit Alekperov of LUKoil to do what he doesn’t want […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, June 21st, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow The Kremlin has not decided yet how it should privatize Alrosa, according to official disclosures at yesterday’s cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The kickback, I mean kickoff of the diamond privatization worth at least $14 billion remains out of reach for the time being.

by John Helmer - Friday, June 8th, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow If President Vladimir Putin is intending to demonstrate he has already lost control of the newly appointed government and their oligarch business partners, then in the proposal of Suleiman Kerimov to expand Alrosa’s asset base by buying BHP’s diamond mines in Canada, and privatize 51% of the company in a public […]

by John Helmer - Friday, June 1st, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Alrosa has announced that the privatization plan for sale of its shares on the open market should be restricted in order to preserve government control of the company. The announcement was released Friday after a meeting of the Supervisory Board, Alrosa’s board of directors. Now why exactly would this group of […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 21st, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow LUKoil, the second largest of Russia’s oil producers and exporters, is thinking of disposing of its northwestern Russian diamond mine known as Grib, selling the subsidiary Arkhangelskgeoldobycha (AGD) which has held the controversial mining licence through fifteen years of litigation and arbitration with Archangel Diamond Corporation (ADC), a De Beers-owned company […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 16th, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Alrosa’s state-owned shares will not be privatized until 2017, if then, a Kremlin document reveals this week. The document is a 35-page briefing paper compiled by the Ministry of Economic Development, and presented by the Minister, Elvira Nabiullina, to President Dmitry Medvedev on January 24. In a tabulation of the government’s […]

by John Helmer - Friday, January 27th, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Archangel Diamond Corporation (ADC) has this month renewed its battle against LUKoil for the latter’s alleged theft of multi-billion diamond mining rights at the Verkhotina deposit in the Arkhangelsk region of northwestern Russia. The new claims were lodged in the US District Court in the District of Colorado on January 6. […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 17th, 2012
No Comments »