By John Helmer, Moscow

“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

That was Jesus Christ (lead image, left) talking, not German Gref (lead image, left), chief executive of Sberbank and the most powerful banker in Russia. The children Gref has been talking about are  paying clients of a new Moscow school established by Yana Gref (image, far right),German’s  second wife,  who is financed by Sberbank. And also Oleg Gref, son by Gref’s first wife, whose asset appraisal and consulting business depends on contracts from Sberbank. The kingdom of heaven belonging to Yana Gref is called Khoroshevskaya progymnasium  – for short,  Khoroshkola (Хорошкола); the one belonging to Oleg Gref is called Brayne Asset and Change Management. 

When money flows from Gref’s bank to these relatives and their businesses, the relationship is understood in international anti-corruption practice to be nepotism. Originally an Italian word meaning nephew, the term referred to the practice of medieval Catholic Church cardinals and popes, purportedly celibate and childless, of promoting and enriching their kin. It means the same in Russian (непотизм).  The Russian language makes doubly sure everybody knows this crime by having a word of local derivation to mean the same; that’s kumovstvo (кумовство).

In 2013, the State Duma proposed to make nepotism unlawful by adding an amendment to the Anti-Corruption Law of 2008.    This provision made it illegal in Russia for money to be paid from state agencies, state corporations or state banks to organisations whose directors, deputy directors and chief accountants are close relatives of the directors, deputy directors or chief accountants of the state agency which is the source of the money. 

But the amendment failed to pass. Nepotism (непотизм, кумовство) is missing from Russian law and current practice. It’s legal; the Gref family proves it.

The Gref family nepotism is not breaking news. It has been more frequently reported by Russian journalists than for any other Russian banker or minister of state. Also, Gref has been more thoroughly exposed in the press than his business friend, the grand larcenist, fraudster, tax felon and money-launderer Suleiman Kerimov; the details of those allegations (repeat allegations) can be read here. 

The unreported novelty in today’s story is how Russian law and those who enact it have allowed a loophole for Gref to get away with what are serious felonies in other places.

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by Editor - Thursday, March 8th, 2018
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By David O’Brien, Boston

The mainstream media (MSM) lie constantly.

Writers in the alternative media work hard to expose these lies as they appear each day. But there is only so much they can catch in real time. Sometimes, looking back at an old story can give you a better understanding of exactly what happened, especially since you can include events that occurred after the initial story disappeared from the headlines.

I did this for a story that took place in October of 2014, when Sweden’s military conducted a massive search for what they were convinced was a Russian submarine lurking in their territorial waters. The story was headline news for a week straight, and people who follow the news most likely remember it to this day. (more…)

by Editor - Monday, March 5th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Still coughing from the effects of the influenza which has infected most of Europe this winter, President Vladimir Putin has declared that for his last term in office, Russia is at war with the United States.

In his Federal Assembly speech on March 1, Putin also made sure that for his succession, he intends  the Russian military-industrial complex to prevail over the oligarchs on whom Kremlin rule has depended since 1996.  Politically, this means the rise  of Dmitry Rogozin, currently deputy prime minister in charge of the defence sector,  and Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister. Putin has signalled he intends the defeat of the pro-American business faction in Moscow, which US sanctions have been attempting to promote since 2014. (more…)

by Editor - Sunday, March 4th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

One of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) officials responsible for the state takeover and subsequent collapse of Trust Bank and Otkritie Bank has been removed from office for the second time in fifteen months.  Mikhail Sukhov (lead image, right), a deputy governor of the CBR responsible for regulating Russia’s biggest banks, was ousted from the Central Bank in October 2016. Hired by the state VTB Bank the following month, he was removed by VTB this week. 

A Moscow newspaper reports Sukhov was ousted because he was unable to perform his role at VTB “in strengthening mutual understanding with the regulator [Central Bank], which, in fact, was his key task.” The newspaper, reporting VTB sources, hints that Sukhov’s job was a sinecure to cover up what had happened at the Central Bank. VTB, the bank told reporters, “does not expect his responsibilities will be redistributed between the relevant chairmen.” 

Ilya Yurov, the former chief executive and control shareholder of Trust Bank, commented from London that Sukhov had “played an important role in Otkritie’s conspiracy” to take over Trust Bank’s assets.   Yurov’s version of where the $4 billion in money reportedly missing from the Trust-Otkritie combination since 2014 can be read here.  

Until Sukhov’s ouster, Elvira Nabiullina (lead image, left), who heads the Central Bank, had assigned him to  “coordinate and control the work of the Systemically Important Banks Supervision Department, the Credit Institutions Licensing and Financial Rehabilitation Department and the International Cooperation and Public Communications Department.”  Neither the CBR’s press office nor Sukhov commented at the time  on his ouster.  Sukhov and VTB are not responding to calls for comment on this week’s exit. (more…)

by Editor - Friday, March 2nd, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The state media organ British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is preparing a television broadcast on Oleg Deripaska and asking journalists in Moscow to help.  Deripaska is the Russian state aluminium monopolist. The cue for the BBC is the new round of sanctions which the US Treasury says it is preparing,   and the campaign of Russian race hatred which American and British government officials conduct each day. (more…)

by Editor - Wednesday, February 28th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The Central Bank of Russia’s plan for saving two of Russia’s leading non-state retail banks, National Bank Trust (aka Trust Bank, NBT) and Otkritie Bank, is unravelling because the two key witnesses to the wrongdoing which caused the banks to collapse are now under investigation for alleged wrongdoing themselves.

On February 20 in London,  Benedict Worsley, Otkritie Bank’s lead witness against the former administration of Trust Bank, was charged in the UK High Court with breach of trust, unlawful profiteering and taking bribes from Otkritie Bank. (more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, February 27th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The Central Bank of Russia has authorized Suleiman Kerimov to take shareholding control of Vozrozhdenie Bank from Dmitry and Alexei Ananiev. The negotiation between Kerimov and the Central Bank occurred late last week. The Ananievs were absent abroad.

Eight weeks earlier, on December 15, the Central Bank had ousted them from shareholding control of Promsvyazbank, the first of the Ananiev banks; announced several billion dollars in bailout financing,  and began an  investigation of the Ananievs for grand larceny and fraud.  The Central Bank and the Finance Ministry have subsequently decided to nationalize Promsvyazbank.

The new deal with Kerimov privatizes Vozrozhdenie Bank on terms which provide state bank funding and guarantees, details of which have not been officially announced.

The circumstances of the double bailout are unprecedented in Russian banking history. Never before have two suspected bank thieves on the run been replaced by a man under arrest and facing trial for money laundering, fraud, tax evasion and other crimes.

There is one difference between the Ananiev brothers and Kerimov. For the time being, the Ananievs have yet to face criminal or civil charges in a Russian court; they have taken the Central Bank to court in Moscow charging abuse of power. Kerimov, by contrast, is facing indictment by French prosecutors in Nice for financial transactions identified in the Nice magistrate’s records  at almost one billion Euros. He is under house arrest at Cap d’Antibes, with a court-ordered bail of €40 million to relieve him of imprisonment after he had served two days. 

There is one more difference. According to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) which Russia ratified in 2006,  Kerimov as a senator in the Federation Council is a politically exposed person (PEP) who cannot be authorized to take control of a bank while he exercises political functions unless he meets exceptionally strict domestic and international standards of disclosure and supervision.  Kerimov cannot qualify.  In addition, Russian law on the status of elected officials prohibits Kerimov from conducting business transactions with the Central Bank or anyone else for personal gain.

The Central Bank was asked this week to confirm whether it had negotiated in Moscow with Kerimov and authorized him to take control of Vozrozhdenie from the Ananievs.  The bank refused to say by telephone, and did not provide an official release. It requested an email of the question, and then  refused to answer.

Senator Yury Vorobyov (Vorobiev), deputy speaker and head of the Federation Council’s control commission for enforcement of the senators’ code of conduct, was asked if Kerimov’s negotiations with the Ananievs in January and with the Central Bank a few days ago violate the law prohibiting members of the Council from carrying on business. Vorobyov refused to respond either directly, or through a spokesman.

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by Editor - Friday, February 23rd, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The three types of power which decide the fate of regimes are force, fraud and subversion; that’s to say, arms, money, media.

The Roman Empire was good at using small armies to take on much bigger ones;  by adeptly concentrating their force they managed to rule much larger large territories than the legions could cover. The Byzantine Empire excelled at using bribery of locals to stay loyal;  the pre-requisite for that was  the intelligence to identify who to pay, how much, and how often.  The British Empire used subversion to divide and rule most of their colonial targets, but if the British were matched for firepower and intelligence, they failed and were defeated – by the American colonists, the Maoris, the Boers, the Germans, the Japanese.

The American Empire excels at subversion on the home front.  But abroad it usually combines fraud with  subversion. When these two fail to preserve or topple regimes, US-made wars have been a consistent failure. The Russians are better than Americans at force and fraud. Schemes of subversion like the US plots to promote Boris Yeltsin, Anatoly Chubais, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Alexei Navalny to rule the Kremlin, are not winners with Russians; they are judged successful only by foreigners who read  the  Washington Post and London  Times.

The Kremlin official responsible for Russian media involvement in the US presidential election of 2016 was Dmitry Peskov (2^nd image, left); he doubles as spokesman for President Vladimir Putin. For Peskov’s intention to employ social media he has not been indicted nor identified as a co-conspirator by Special Prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III ( right). For the evidence Mueller has revealed of incompetence in the Russian campaign, the waste of money expended, and the failure of the campaign’s objectives, there are calls in Moscow for Peskov to be sacked.

He has so far avoided responding. “We have not yet familiarized ourselves [with the Mueller indictment], ” he told Reuters.     (more…)

by Editor - Sunday, February 18th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The Dutch Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra (lead image, left) resigned his post this week after admitting he had publicly and repeatedly lied that he had met with President Vladimir Putin when he had not done so.  

The Dutch press, which initiated the investigation exposing the lie, reports that in his resignation speech to the Dutch parliament  Zijlstra confessed “the biggest mistake of my political life…The Netherlands deserves a minister who is above any doubt.”

In Canada, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland (right) – appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in January 2017 — has been lying about meeting President Putin when she did not.

No Canadian newspaper has investigated Freeland’s lying, and she has expanded the lie to meetings with other Russian officials, which also did not happen.  The Toronto Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen and the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) have also failed to report Zijlstra’s resignation for his Putin lie; their editors blocked the Reuters  and Bloomberg  wire reports, which have been running on Canadian newsroom screens,  from appearing in print.    (more…)

by Editor - Wednesday, February 14th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Oleg Deripaska (left) has issued a statement decrying a text and YouTube broadcast  published last week which allege improprieties on a fishing trip off the Norwegian coast when Deripaska hosted Sergei Prikhodko  (right). The trip occurred in August 2016. At the time, Prikhodko was Deputy Prime Minister and head of the government staff under Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.  

Prikhodko, 61, started a career in the Soviet Foreign Ministry in 1981. He then transferred to the Kremlin where he has been a Kremlin staff assistant to Presidents Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin and Medvedev.  Prikhodko remains in his post until a new government is appointed following the presidential election on March 18. 

 “I will severely suppress any attempts to create and disseminate false information flow,” Deripaska has announced.

The broadcast about Prikhodko’s fishing trip with Deripaska first appeared on February 8. Since then it has drawn to date 4.8 million views. (more…)

by Editor - Wednesday, February 14th, 2018
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