By John Helmer, Moscow

Theologians may wrestle to Kingdom Come before they will agree that a gusher of faith can be drilled out of a bedrock of reason. In the case of junior Russian oil companies taking money from investors on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), the gushers are proving to be short-lived. The loss of faith can be measured in the collapse of share price and market capitalization – and in the files of Mirabaud Securities, the Swiss promoter of a great deal of short-lived enthusiasm.

Timan Oil and Gas, for example, failed to produce what it promised from prospects in the Arctic region of Timan Pechora; defaulted on its loans; delisted its shares; and is now in liquidation. Ruspetro, operating in the Khanty-Mansiysk region of western Siberia, listed its shares at the start of 2012, but in two years they have collapsed to a tenth of their peak value. Mirabaud was a lead manager for both issues.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The Kremlin has yet to agree to a Ukrainian application for the resumption of duty-free quotas for steel pipe imports to Russia. In December, Ukrainian Industry Minister Mykhaylo Korolenko told Bloomberg that there had been an agreement with the Kremlin to reinstate the quotas which were cancelled on July 1 and a penalty duty of 19% introduced instead. In effect, this killed the Ukrainian trade.
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by John Helmer - Monday, January 20th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The dickhead question is not which direction the dick is pointing in, but whether it’s connected to the brain. The heart being an automatic organ, it’s the brain which must obey the rules of informed consent and their corollary, the age of consent. Among the ancient Greeks, who celebrated homosexuality more than any culture before or since, these rules were enforced to the point of capital punishment for infringing them.

If you plan on travelling to Sochi with homosex on your mind, and you are having trouble understanding what the French President has been doing with his dick, and what the Russian President says you shouldn’t be doing with yours, you should read the 634-page history of how the ancient Greeks regulated the passions between age-groups.* A second primer by the same author explains what endorsers of Hollande’s conduct today fail to appreciate when they attack Putin’s conduct – this is the ancient Greek concept of dickheadedness. The Greeks called it ἀκολασία (akolasia), meaning intemperance; lack of self-control; the vice of excess when desires are not corrected by reason. This is the key to understanding 135-FZ, the Russian law banning public “propagating non-traditional sexual relations among minors”, enacted by the State Duma, the Federation Council and Putin in June of 2013.
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by John Helmer - Monday, January 20th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Interpipe, the heavily indebted Ukrainian pipemaker owned by Victor Pinchuk (left foreground), has defaulted on its pledge to list its Eurobonds on the Luxembourg Stock Exchange by December 27, a notice from Deutsche Bank, the bond trustee, has revealed. This is Pinchuk’s second default in two months. On November 1, Interpipe announced it was unable to pay its international banks $106 million due on at least half a billion dollars in loans.

According to the latest disclosure, Deutsche Bank now has the authority to call for repayment of the face value of the Interpipe bonds plus interest. Interpipe’s last financial report indicates that as of December 31, 2012, the sum owing would be more than $198 million. A repayment call would also trigger repayment demands from Interpipe’s international banks and the Italian export agency SACE. The banks, led by ING of the Netherlands, Commerzbank of Germany, and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), are owed more than $543 million; SACE, $156 million.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, January 15th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

It’s possible to imagine that when Kornei Chukovsky wrote about crocodiles telephoning Moscow for take-out galoshes to eat (1926), or about the bear who beat up a crocodile and saved the sun from his jaws (1916), he was doing something secret and political for adults, instead of making children laugh and learn to read. It’s even possible to interpret Osip Mandelstam’s children’s book, Two Trams (1925), as a coded attack on Lenin’s definition of five years earlier — “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.”

For those in the west who hate Russia, it’s anathema to suppose there ever was a time – tsarist past, communist past, or post-communist present – when Russians of any age smiled, either inadvertently or sentimentally, for the fun of it. This must be the reason why a newly published album of illustrations from Russian children’s books published between 1920 and 1935 recommends the artfulness of the works and designs, but feels obliged at the same time to castigate the country and regime in which they were produced.*
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by John Helmer - Monday, January 13th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the United States and Russia appeared to agree that the President of Tajikistan, Emomali Rahmon, was a crook.

It now appears that whatever government officials say in private, in public it is now US policy, along with that of the multilateral banks which the US dominates, that Rahmon’s reputation is to be protected, enhanced even. By contrast, United Company Rusal, Russia’s state aluminium monopoly, is turning up the public pressure on Rahmon with threats to expose his private money-box in the British Virgin Islands unless he pays two court-ordered judgements for a total of $347 million.
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by John Helmer - Monday, January 13th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

This year the Moscow School of Management at Skolkovo is planning to publish what it calls a market atlas of the jobs and professions which will be newly needed by the year 2020, and those needed no longer. One of the new ones is what the Skolkovo atlas calls a cyber-cleaner (кибердворник). This is a specialist in removing from the internet and all digital data archives whatever information someone pays to have cleaned or deleted entirely. One of the professions the cyber-cleaners will replace, according to the atlas, is journalism.

That’s just six years away. But for at least a handful of the Skolkovo school’s coordination council — Roman Abramovich, Alexander Abramov, Alexander Voloshin, Anatoly Chubais – none too soon. So ask yourself the question — will they too be cleaned or washed up this year, or by 2020? For the answer, a little old-fashioned journalism may go a long way. Read on.

by John Helmer - Sunday, January 12th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Having destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, the next big event for the regime-changers of the western media will be the Downhill at Sochi. If our brave reporters can’t find sexual disorientation and repression, they will provoke it during the Pair Skating. The Canadians will discover the Federal Security Service rigged the rocks in the Curling. The Team Luge winners will unveil Pussy Riot balaclavas under their helmets on the medal podium. The Russian ice-hockey team will be proof of President Vladimir Putin’s macho if they win gold; and of the shemasculinity of western democracy if they lose. Russian security police will be captured on a Youtube clip gone viral when they try clubbing to death images of Boris Berezovsky and Alexander Litvinenko projected by laser on to the slope during the Grand Slalom. The Mossad will issue a robust denial that its agents slipped a virus into the event timing and scoring computer programmes. A Ukrainian flag will be dropped by a stealth drone on to the dignatories box during the Closing Ceremony. The London Times and Fox Television will sum up, following proprietor Rupert Murdoch’s tweet, SOCHI – SUCH IGNOMINY!!! Russian journalists who turn a blind eye to these scoops will be disqualified from applying for Harvard University’s Nieman Fellowship.
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by John Helmer - Friday, December 27th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

For as long the Russian tax man can remember, Oleg Deripaska has managed to keep his tax bill far below his Russian peers in the metals business. As national champions go, Deripaska is it for tax minimization. In good years or bad years, whether the London Metal Exchange price for aluminium is high or low, Deripaska’s tax has always gone through the floor. In 2003, a federal Tax Ministry report discovered that Rusal was paying income tax at just 2% of revenues. The percentage rose to 4% in 2006, but it has been diving ever since. In 2007, it was 3.1%; in 2008, 0.4%; 2009, 2.1%; 2010, 1.9%; 2011, 3%. Last year his tax rate was 0.2%. This year, according to Rusal’s interim report for the first nine months, tax is running at 0.97%.

How Deripaska has been able to pull off a trick no other major Russian company has managed has been no secret all these years. Three words do the trick – tolling, transfer pricing, offshorization. On December 12, President Vladimir Putin said enough is enough. His offer – either Deripaska brings Rusal onshore and pays Russian tax on his revenue, or else he loses the state banking credits which have kept Rusal from bankruptcy since November 2008. Either way, Deripaska looks washed up.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, December 26th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

So far everything about the metamorphosis of Mikhail Khodorkovsky has gone like the cartoon – surprise launch into the air; flight without turbulence; soft landing among a flock of wellwishers; much cooing.

Just how well those wishers intend towards Khodorkovsky, and he towards them, is now to be tested. That’s a game even more Olympian than the one to be inaugurated in Sochi on February 7; or the one which those who hate President Vladimir Putin have yet to appreciate he’s playing.
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by John Helmer - Monday, December 23rd, 2013
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