By John Helmer, Moscow

Not every despotic and corrupt ruler of a former Soviet state is the target of US Government plots to overthrow him, not even those whose taste in interior decoration and jewellery is as awful as Victor Yanukovich’s, the ex-president of Ukraine.

Emomali Rahmon (image), the president of Tajikistan since 1992, has been the target of corruption allegations by the US Government in the past. But for the time being he is protecting himself with a Washington lobbying campaign costing at least $100,000 per month. For his exterior decorator Rahmon has hired James Fabiani, a former congressional staffer turned public relations agent. His eponymous lobbying company employs an Englishman named Alex Botting to arrange meetings with US Government officials, US Congressional staff, and also, according to Botting, Washington-based executives of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 26th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

A Russian declaration of war and the despatch of troops to secure the Crimea would be very serious things, if they materialized.

The Financial Times reporter, Kathrin Hille (image), is the only person in the entire world who claims to have been told by “a senior government official”: “If Ukraine breaks apart, it will trigger a war. They will lose Crimea first [because] we will go in and protect [it], just as we did in Georgia.” Hille not only keeps the name, rank and authority of this official secret, but she refuses to provide evidence to substantiate that the official exists and said the quoted words with the meaning Hille’s newspaper claimed in its story headline: “Russia rattles sabre over fate of Crimea”. Hille’s claim that a Russian government threat was issued last week to move forces into Crimea appears to be a fabrication.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 25th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

Would you buy a used car from David Bonderman (lead image), Dmitry Shvets, and Jan Dunning if you knew they registered their businesses in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Cayman Islands, and Bahamas; kept their takings out of their companies and in their pockets; and were more heavily indebted to the state than any of their competitors?

Bonderman is one of the principals of the TPG Group, an equity investment fund in San Francisco; Shvets works for him as the head of TPG’s Moscow office; and Dunning, a Dutchman, is chief executive of Lenta, a Russian supermarket and hypermarket operator. Together, they are trying to sell their shares on Lenta’s second attempt at an initial public offering (IPO) on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). The story of the failure of their first attempt can be read here. This time, they are more confident of selling about one in five of Lenta’s shares and pocketing about $1 billion for themselves. Unlike most Russian IPOs in the international market, not a penny of this share sale will be invested in the future of Lenta’s business.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 20th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

United Company Rusal, the Russian aluminium monopoly headed by Oleg Deripaska (image right), has won a fresh round in its battle to keep control of its Nigerian aluminium smelter, and ward off claims from a Nigerian-American group whom it defeated in the privatization of the asset almost a decade ago. For the time being, the Nigerian government, headed by President Goodluck Jonathan (left), will neither support Rusal, nor act against it. The indecisive Jonathan lost majority control of the Nigerian House of Representatives in December, and he faces an uncertain presidential election in a year’s time.

In a ruling of Nigerian High Court Justice Jude Okeke, issued in Abuja on January 27, the Nigerian Government’s Attorney-General and Minister of Justice were ordered to face trial with Rusal in the corruption and damages claim by BFI Group Divino Corporation (BFIG). Rusal had asked the court to join the government to the case. BFIG opposed, arguing that in a separate proceeding the Nigerian courts had already ruled against the government, and in favour of BFIG. According to BFIG’s lawyer in court, Rusal’s move threatened to “open a floodgate for everyone who seeks to interrupt proceedings.”
(more…)

by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 19th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, the former and wannabe presidents of the US, say they have accepted more than $13 million from Ukrainian pipemaker Victor Pinchuk since 2006. But Pinchuk says he’s given the Clinton Foundation only $7.6 million.

It won’t help to employ accountants to ask where the missing $5.4 million was originally trousered, if not the Pinchuk Foundation, then which branch of Pinchuk’s business. That’s because the Clinton Foundation’s auditors – an Arkansas firm called BKD – have turned up this much money in revenues, and also in expenditures, which the Foundation’s annual report inexplicably fails to report and regularly understates. The Pinchuk Foundation also refuses to answer questions about discrepancies in its annual accounts, whose auditors are reported by Pinchuk’s organization to be Ernst & Young. Their signature is reproduced in the Pinchuk Foundation annual reports, although no copy of their financial reports and notes has been published.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Monday, February 17th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

The latest independent polling of Ukrainian voters reveals that opposition strategy and political loyalties have been split by US government intervention. As a result, Ukrainian support for Vitali Klitschko, head of the UDAR opposition party, is weakening. UDAR, the acronym, stands for the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform; in Russian the word means “punch”. In English reporting, Klitschko’s organization is called BLOW.

According to new voter polls, instead of the weakening Klitschko (image centre), the opposition candidate the US wants to keep in prison, Yulia Tymoshenko (2nd from left), has been gaining voter support. But the embattled President, Victor Yanukovich (right), is recovering votes at the expense of both of them.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, February 14th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

If Ziyavudin Magomedov hadn’t persuaded a Moscow business newspaper to report yesterday that he is in negotiations with Rosneft, world’s largest publicly traded oil producer, the news that Vitol, world’s largest oil trader, has abandoned a 3-year old venture to build a new Rotterdam oil terminal with Magomedov would have been bad news indeed. Magomedov has a knack for exaggerated deal releases, though, and the Rotterdam press coverage of the latest episode makes this one look worse for Magomedov than if he had said nothing at all. Who in their right mind broadcasts that he has asked Igor Sechin, chief executive of Rosneft, for money until after Sechin has said yes.

In Magomedov’s case, an appeal to Sechin also means that not even the financier of Magomedov’s last resort, David Bonderman of US-based TPG Group, is willing to put up his dime.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 12th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to pork sausage. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our profitability.

If Europeans do that, it’s classical from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. If Russians do it, it’s trade war. Oleg Tyagnibok, the Ukrainian oppositionist whom the US Government is promoting into power in Kiev, hasn’t been asked yet what he thinks of the Russian ban on European pork imports. But he’s bound to blame the “Moscow-Jewish mafia” because he’s blamed them before, though not exactly for trying to enforce the kosher code.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 11th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland (right), was born in 1961. She is too young to have read Graham Greene’s book, The Quiet American, published in 1955 to explain why US attempts to liberate Vietnam by inventing a “Third Force” of locals would end in death and destruction for the Vietnamese; failure for the Americans. The US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt (left), born in 1963, is two years younger than Nuland, and that much more innocent of the meaning of The Quiet American.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, February 7th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

A reporter for the New York Times has scooped the global press in Sochi. Named David Herszenhorn, the newspaper’s specialist on the New York City borough of Queens, the reporter has uncovered a plot to kill a group of stray dogs – by poison darts causing suffocation — in front of the main venues of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. The dog death plot, according to Herszenhorm, was intended to “undercut the image of a friendlier, welcoming Russia that President Vladimir V. Putin has sought to cultivate in recent months.”

Herszenhorn (image, centre) also reveals that a counter-plan to save Sochi from televised images of violent canine death is being financed by Oleg Deripaska (image, left), chief executive of United Company Rusal. “Mr Deripaska, an industrialist who largely made his fortune in aluminum, provided $15,000 to get the shelter started on land donated by the local government. He has also pledged about $50,000 a year for operations.”
(more…)

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 6th, 2014
No Comments »