By John Helmer, Moscow

The report last week of an abrupt ban on kangaroo imports to Russia, issued on July 25, concluded with the statement by Rosselkhoznadzor (RSN), the government’s veterinary and phytosanitary inspectorate, that there had been no phytosanitary problem with the meat, and that with guarantees RSN will negotiate with the Australian exporter, the ban might be lifted.

The Australian exporter, Macro Meats, has reacted with the hope that negotiations with RSN will achieve this outcome soon.
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by John Helmer - Sunday, August 4th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

If you like eating river pike, apply to President Vladimir Putin who recently landed a big one (image left). If you like ocean seabass, this story is for you, especially if what your fishmonger calls Chilean Seabass is in fact toothfish; depending on how cold the waters are in which it is caught, this is either Patagonian Toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) or Antarctic Toothfish (Dissostichus mawsoni – image right). The latter is mostly what you’ll eat if you buy zubatka (зубатка) in Russia.

There is another labelling problem with this fish. If you believe what Putin-hostile organizations like the Guardian of London and the Pew Trust of the United States report, the Russian government is responsible for standing alone against the rest of the world in order to block proposals to stop fishing in two areas of the Antarctic – Ross Sea, in the south of the Antarctic land mass, and along the eastern shoreline. In those areas toothfish comprise the biggest catch, followed by krill.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, August 1st, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Reports from the Moscow headquarters of United Company Rusal, indicated last week that in an arrangement with Glencore Xstrata, large volumes of unsold metal are being stocked off the market in Estonia and other locations, and are not counted in the worldwide stockpile count of the London Metal Exchange (LME). The reports began here; the impact of last week’s US investigations was reported here.

In trading of Rusal shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange over the month of July, the share price has slipped almost 16%, and is now below HK$2.70 for the first time ever. The company’s market capitalization is now $5.2 billion – that is half the total of the loans and borrowings Rusal reports as owing on March 31.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 30th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Russia, the biggest market in the world for exports of Australian kangaroo meat, has thrown the trade into confusion by announcing that authorization for the exporter, Macro Meats of South Australia, has been suspended. According to a July 25 notice from Rosselkhoznadzor (RSN), the government’s veterinary and phytosanitary inspectorate, a container load of kangaroo meat was stopped when inspection found that it originated from a source other than the one licensed for import by RSN. Although RSN isn’t specific, the port is believed to have been Vladivostok, and the seizure about three weeks ago.

Most of the kangaroo meat landing in Russia goes into sausages fabricated and consumed in the Russian fareast. This has been because domestic beef and pork production in the region has been too small to fill the sausage skins, and kangaroo can be landed from Australia more cheaply than imported American, European or Chinese pork. To the south, in China, Australian kangaroo traders claim that choice, higher-cost fillets of the kangaroo are potentially in high demand.
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by John Helmer - Monday, July 29th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

There are at least five million tonnes of aluminium in storage at the moment hidden from count in order to prevent the price of the metal from collapsing. Much , if not most of that aluminium comes from the Russian aluminium monopoly, United Company Rusal. Investigators for the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in Washington, and members and staff of the Senate Banking Committee, under pressure from constituents who want to lower the aluminium price, are beginning to take an interest in market rigging schemes by Rusal and its principal trader, Glencore Xstrata. First to feel the impact is Rusal’s share price, which slipped this week to HK$2.89, with a market capitalization now of less than $6 billion.

So dependent are Rusal’s revenue and profit lines on keeping its metal out of sight, a recent call by Rusal for greater transparency and accuracy in the disclosure of trader and storage operations was unusual. In remarks to Bloomberg in May, Oleg Mukhamedshin, Rusal’s deputy chief executive, said “the market is not as transparent as it could be. We are asked by our investors what’s going on, and we are just not able to address those questions.” Rusal insiders, who can address those questions with the missing numbers, say they are “terrified” of company sanctions if they do. “Despite the fact that financial investors have such a significant impact on LME prices, we cannot have a proper analysis in terms of open interest and stocks,” Mukhamedshin added in his Bloomberg interview. “The whole world is trying to get more transparent. There are clear benchmarks. Why shouldn’t LME follow best benchmarks?” He was kidding.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, July 25th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

It’s been three years almost to the day since Vladimir Putin (left), then Russian Prime Minister, visited the Gremyachinskoye potash mine in southwestern Volgograd region.

The mine, the newest in construction in Russia, with one of the country’s largest potash reserves, and one of the most costly ever to be built, is owned by Eurochem. This nitrogen, phosphorus and potash fertilizer company is already, the company’s website proclaims, number-1 in Russia, number-3 in Europe, and number-10 in the world. According to its owner, Eurochem aims to be number-5 in the world once Gremyachinskoye starts operating. Eurochem is 92.2% owned by Andrei Melnichenko (right), who is also chairman of the company board. But Melnichenko was nowhere to be seen when Putin visited his property. Instead, Putin was hosted by Eurochem’s chief executive Dmitry Strezhnev. He is Melnichenko’s placeman. Strezhnev owns 7.8% of the Eurochem shares through an offshore equity and trade proceeds scheme which Melnichenko controls in Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, and Switzerland.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, July 24th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Moe (Moses Horwitz) of Three Stooges fame stuck his fingers so often in Curly’s (Jerome Horwitz) eyes, it was Curly the audiences loved — until he died of too much drinking and eating. No chance that if Russia’s President Vladimir Putin keeps giving French President Francois Hollande the two-fingered, two-eyed poke, the audiences will fall for the latter, or that Hollande’s fate will be as ignominious as Curly’s. This time the audiences prefer the Moe character. But what exactly has Hollande done, and keeps doing, that he deserves Putin’s eyeball treatment?

The first of Putin’s pokes at Hollande was the award in January of this year of a Russian passport and an apartment on One Democracy Street, Saransk, for Gerard Depardieu. This was followed in February by Hollande’s first visit to Moscow when he and Putin pretended to be businesslike, and Hollande dropped his regime-change talk, at least his earlier support for the overthrow of Putin himself. It’s quite clear that Hollande has struck the Russians as a duplicitous hypocrite. But it’s just as clear that he is so feeble domestically that it’s the French who are giving him the double-eyed poke. His approval rating (Ifop measurement) was 26% in June; last week it was 27%. No French president has proved to be so deeply and widely unpopular so quickly.
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by John Helmer - Monday, July 22nd, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Following last week’s report on the stockpiling of aluminium belonging to United Company Rusal, a source close to the London Metal Exchange has written to say he recalls a similar scheme for storing Russian aluminium in Estonia a decade ago. He reports that the warehouse used was located in Tallinn and had been known as Albatros Warehousing. By the start of 2000 Albatros Warehousing was in trouble with the LME and in the UK High Court. “During the late 1990s-early 2000, Albatross was a private company in Tallinn. It seems to have disappeared (perhaps acquired) in the early 2000s. They used bright orange in their logo, and it was very recognisable.” By May of 2000, the LME delisted Albatros and ordered its aluminium transferred to other warehouses.

by John Helmer - Sunday, July 21st, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A decision this week by the Kremlin to raise duties on imported pipes from the Ukraine will hit Interpipe, the heavily indebted pipemaker owned by Victor Pinchuk (left), particularly hard as it faces debt default negotiations with the Ukrainian government, headed by Victor Yanukovich (right), and with a syndicate of European banks. The Fitch ratings agency has warned that if Interpipe’s export revenues fail to meet Pinchuk’s projections as a result of the curtailment of the Russian trade, the company faces a downgrade, and the cost of its debt service will rise sharply.

Following a meeting with Russian steelmakers on Tuesday, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev revealed that as a stimulus measure for local producers of steel strip and pipes, the government has decided to raise import duties and restrict the inflow of imported Ukrainian pipes. “I have decided not to extend the quotas for the supply of Ukrainian pipe products in the last six months”, Medvedev said, endorsing the view of the domestic pipemakers that Ukrainian pipemakers are unfairly undercutting the price of pipes on the Russian market.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, July 18th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The share price of United Company Rusal, the Russian state aluminium monopoly, has again dropped below the three-dollar (Hong Kong) level, and is heading towards oblivion – that’s the Citi Bank forecast of HK$1.80. In London and Moscow the market calculation is that, despite the company’s announced cuts to production of aluminium, Rusal’s second-quarter sales, revenues, costs, profit and loss to be released shortly, will reveal a worsening picture.

Just how much worse the share price can get Rusal insiders realize at Moscow headquarters. That’s because they say that a very large volume of metal Rusal has produced, reported as exported and sold, is stocked in a warehouse beside the Baltic Sea. Only this aluminium hasn’t really been sold – it has been hidden by Rusal and its chief trader, Glencore. A company source said the number is so secret that only chief executive Oleg Deripaska (image right), Glencore chief executive and Rusal board member Ivan Glasenberg (left), and a handful of others know it.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 16th, 2013
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