By John Helmer, Moscow

Rosgeologia is a small Russian state company which once held the record for drilling the deepest hole in the Earth’s crust. Its biggest discoveries of oil, gas and hard-rock minerals lie in its Soviet past. Even with current contracts from the state oil and gas companies Rosneft and Gazprom, it holds only a small share of the Russian market for seismic and geophysical services; its margin for profit, according to the state auditor, is just above break-even.

Last month, Rosgeologia (“Russian Geology”, Rosgeo for short) announced what should be a new record for Russian state investment in South Africa, drilling six super-deep wells into the seabed off the South African coast at a cost of almost $400 million, earning the right to sell billions of dollars’ worth of gas. Hours later when they met, President Vladimir Putin and President Jacob Zuma ignored the deal entirely.   Russian experts in Moscow say they haven’t heard of it. The three top officials of Rosgeologia refuse to explain what they have contracted to do.  When one of them, Roman Panov, Rosgeo’s chief executive, advertised his company’s future prospects in a lengthy interview with a Moscow newspaper, the South African offshore oil and gas project wasn’t mentioned at all.

The reason, Moscow sources say, is that they are sceptical Rosgeo has the resources to implement the deal, or that the Russian state banks will accept the risk of South African default.  The reason for that, Russian sources add, is that they believe the Zuma administration is too weak politically, too unstable, and with too little time left in Zuma’s mandate to implement the project. A Russian source is worried that President Zuma aims to  take as much cash from Rosgeo as he can, and run.

South African allegations of involvement in the Rosgeo deal of a Zuma family member, as well as political allies of the president who were at Rosgeo in Moscow recently, threaten to expose the terms of the still secret contract with PetroSA, South Africa’s state oil company, to a High Court challenge for violations of the South African Constitution. That and associated statutes on the management of public money require the Rosgeo-PetroSA deal to be “in accordance with a system which is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective.”   Skepticism about this has already been hinted in a ruling by a South African judge in the High Court in Cape Town on September 22.

The blanket refusal of Rosgeo, the Russian state banks, and PetroSA to answer questions about what they have agreed is a sign of their fear the deal will not survive the transparency test. (more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, October 3rd, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The grand house domestic serial which has been one of the staples of British television is quite impossible in Russia. That’s not because pre-revolutionary Russia lacked the aristo palaces and gilded families, or that nostalgia isn’t popular on television. It’s because the gap between the upstairs family and the downstairs servants was always too wide in Russia – and always too cruel.

It’s not different today. The recent promotion in London and republication of the stories and memoirs of Teffi (lead image), the short-story fabulist, memoirist, poet and playwright who left Russia for Paris in 1919, illustrates the point – and not much else. (more…)

by Editor - Thursday, September 28th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Oleg Deripaska (lead image, left) is famous for snatching other people’s money and legging it.

The records of the High Court in London show what he did to Mikhail Chernoy (Cherney), Boris Berezovsky, and Roman Abramovich. Chernoy recovered $200 million in 2012;  click to open. 

Only two people have ever taken Deripaska’s money and legged it themselves. One was Anthony Louis, owner and editor of the Moscow Tribune,  the first English-language newspaper published in Moscow. Louis took several thousand dollars in exchange for shares to keep his paper afloat but never handed over the shares to Deripaska. The newspaper sank without trace in 2002.

In April 2008 Paul Manafort (lead image, right) took $18,938,400 from Deripaska in return for which he promised to invest up to $100 million in Ukrainian cable television and telecommunications companies. Manafort trousered the cash, or so Deripaska has alleged in court, as he  has been trying to get his money back. 

But Manafort’s hustle has been reported in US newspapers as an attempt to promote Kremlin influence in US elections, especially the one which put Donald Trump into the White House last November.  The evidence for the subversion claim is now being gathered by the Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and reported publicly by leaks of what his investigation has placed in evidence before a grand jury. These include CIA, NSA and FBI surveillance and wire taps of Manafort during the presidential election campaign – yes, during the presidential campaign — and afterwards. (more…)

by Editor - Sunday, September 24th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Her Majesty Raina the Queen Consort of the Hashemite Kingdom of Trans-Jordan, and a Palestinian by birth, has announced that Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, is “a father, a feminist, a moral leader, a global citizen.” She was speaking at the Atlantic Council’s global citizenship awards  in New York on Tuesday evening.

As she presented the award bottle to Trudeau with a symbol of the world as a stopper, she introduced Trudeau as “the spirit that shines so very brightly in this northern star”. To help them swallow that, the audience was also presented by a commercial Canadian sponsor with glasses of another star spirit, Zirkova vodka.

That turns out to be a Ukrainian brew which its owner,  John Vellinga,  called after the Ukrainian word for star, zirka (зірка). It’s also a brew for which Trudeau’s predecessor as prime minister, Stephen Harper, helped to modernize a distillery in the Ukraine, plus zero import duties on reaching the Canadian border, plus endorsement from the US-financed, Kiev-based investment fund Horizon Capital, created with State Department money by Natalie Jaresko, US diplomat turned Ukrainian finance minister turned US official again, and her protégé, a Ukrainian-Canadian named Lenna Koszarny.  (more…)

by Editor - Wednesday, September 20th, 2017
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New broadcast by Chris Cook with John Helmer, Victoria, B.C., Canada

Listen to the discussion of Canada’s Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland’s special relationship with George Soros, Victor Pinchuk,  and the Galician liquidationist lobby which The Real News Network didn’t allow to be broadcast in the US. (more…)

by Editor - Friday, September 15th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

You might say that Russian realism as the style of painting embodying the national spirit, came into its own with “Barge Haulers on the Volga” (lead image), the famous oddity painted by Ilya Repin over three years, 1870-73, following his graduation from the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.  

The canvas depicts a team of burlaki towing a vessel through the Volga sandbars, its sail furled under a headwind strong enough to fill the sail of the barge on the far side of the river.  On the masthead the Russian flag is flying upside down, blowing from left to right. Up river in the distance, there is a motor vessel, its coal-fired smokestack blowing from right to left.   

The painting was commissioned,  paid for,  and hung on his palace wall by Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich Romanov (lead image, front right), son of Tsar Alexander II (ruled 1855-81); brother of Tsar Alexander III (ruled 1881-94), and cousin of the last Romanov tsar, Nicholas II (1894-1917). The duke, the Imperial Academy, and the intelligentsia of St. Petersburg and Moscow considered Repin’s work a portrait of the wretched conditions to which the Russian rural population was subjected, and thus a symbol of the fortitude of Russian people. According to Fyodor Dostovevsky at the time,   what he saw in the painting was “barge haulers, real barge haulers, and nothing more… you can’t help but think you are indebted, truly indebted, to the people.” The master was myopic, insincere, patronising. But note the term, real — we are coming back to it. (more…)

by Editor - Thursday, September 14th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The collapse of Otkritie Bank last month is the largest Russian bank failure since the collapse of National Bank Trust in December 2014.  The Central Bank rescue of Trust made inevitable the much more costly bailout of Otrkitie, announced a fortnight ago on August 29,   charges Ilya Yurov, the former control shareholder and chief executive of Trust, speaking from exile in the UK.  

The reason, according to Yurov, is “the dishonest and deliberately malicious actions of the management and shareholders of Otkritie Bank, and also, unfortunately, a number of officials of the Central Bank of Russia and the Deposit Insurance Agency.”   The state organizations, Yurov alleges,  “continue to adopt dishonest practices when initiating their processes of ‘financial rehabilitation’ or the prevention of bankruptcy of the Russian banks, which inevitably lead to the violation of the rights of customers and bank lenders,  and significantly worsen the situation of the financial industry as a whole.”

Bank analysts and investors in the Russian banks say the combination of failures reveals grave weaknesses in the Central Bank’s supervision. “The black holes in the Russian banking system are expanding,” believes a London banking source. “The more money the Central Bank lends to stop bankruptcy, the faster the cash disappears. Sooner or later, the falling dominoes will come down on [Central Bank Governor Elvira] Nabiullina [lead image] herself.”

Between December 2014 and May 2015 the Central Bank loaned Rb127 billion ($1.7 billion) to Otkritie for the takeover of Trust in what Russian bankers call a “sanitation” – a state funded bailout, administered by the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA)  which stops short of bankruptcy, court-ordered administration, or liquidation.

Then late last month,  after Otkritie depositors lost confidence in the bank and withdrew Rb693 billion ($11.6 billion)  from Otkritie accounts in June,  July, and August,   the Central Bank topped the senior management and board, froze transactions, and commenced fresh lending to preserve Otkritie’s solvency. In exchange for the new cash, the Central Bank now owns 75% of the bank’s shares. Over the coming weeks, from Rb250 billion ($4.3 billion) to Rb400 billion ($6.9 billion) will be the Central Bank bailout required, a deputy governor at the bank announced on September 1. 

Yurov has been charged in Russia with defrauding Trust, triggering the bank’s failure after related-party lending to a network of offshore companies, which Yurov controlled, drained the bank of its cash. Up to $1 billion has been reported as unaccounted for, if not exactly lost. Early this year two of Yurov’s subordinates at the bank were tried and convicted of embezzlement from the bank, using fake loan papers.  

In London and New York Yurov is counter-charging the now ousted chief executive and control shareholder of Otkritie, Vadim Belyaev,  and the next most powerful shareholder on the Otkritie board, Ruben Aganbegyan,  with conspiracy to attack Trust, push it into sanitation,  and withdraw Trust’s cash for themselves through Otkritie. Yurov is also accusing three Central Bank officials at the time of being participants in the cash-and-grab conspiracy.

“Yurov is not a credible accuser,” a Central Bank veteran commented in Moscow. “As the old Russian saying has it, Вор у вора дубинку украл – a thief is stealing a bludgeon from another thief.” (more…)

by Editor - Monday, September 11th, 2017
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From Dimitri Lascaris, Baltimore* (more…)

by Editor - Wednesday, September 6th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

President Vladimir Putin decided there shouldn’t be a centenary commemoration this year for either the February or October Revolutions of 1917.  Instead, he recommended confining the interpretation of the events to “experts”.  Before that, Putin confided publicly his opinion that the Bolsheviks had caused Russia to lose World War I by collaborating with Germany.   Never mind the view of the experts that the strongest source of public support the Bolsheviks had in 1917 was that they – unlike Tsar Nicholas  II, the Provisional Government which replaced him, Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky, or the socialists – wanted to stop the war, and also the home front violence on which the tsarist order depended to rule. Thinking about that, however, has political implications for the present; that’s to say, for the presidential re-election campaign which concludes in seven months’ time, on March 18, 2018.  

Violence, inequality, foreign intervention, national elections, civil war – that’s a highly inflammable combination in Russia, still.  The president hasn’t wanted to add fuel to the flames, and that’s why there is no public commemoration of the Revolution this year. No debate among Russian experts either.

(more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, September 5th, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A Toronto newspaper has revealed that Canada’s leading Russia hater, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, had a deal with George Soros (lead image) to write his biography after she had lost her journalist jobs at the Financial Times and Reuters,  and before she started her run for election to the Canadian parliament.

On August 16 the Toronto Globe and Mail reported Soros is a “close friend” of Freeland, and that with her he has “very great hopes for Canada”. Before she decided to run for parliament, the newspaper says Freeland had a “deal” for “a sort of authorized biography of George Soros”.  Soros’s spokesman in New York, Laura Silber, refused to answer repeated questions last week for clarification of the terms of this deal or the compensation Soros agreed with Freeland. (more…)

by Editor - Monday, September 4th, 2017
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