By John Helmer, Moscow

Three hundred and ninety years ago the Dutch water-boarded and then executed a group of British merchants on the trumped-up allegation of plotting to seize the Dutch fortress on the island of Ambon, now part of Indonesia where it is called Maluku. Remember the Amboyna Massacre! became fighting talk in London for fifty years, leading to a decade of litigation in The Netherlands, and ultimately to the first Anglo-Dutch War of 1652-54 The British won that one – and also the second war of 1655-57, and the third war of 1672-74.

The real reason for the massacre was that the Dutch were determined to hang on to their monopoly of the nutmeg harvest on the island, and make sure the British didn’t undercut their prices or their influence with the local sultans, who controlled the indigenous nutmeg plantations. In those days, nutmeg was more than the sweet spice it’s thought of today. It was a strategic commodity – almost a matter of national security. That was because it was believed to be able to ward off the fatal attack of the Black Plague.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, November 12th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Interpipe, the leading Ukrainian pipemaker, failed to meet last Friday’s deadline for repayment to its international bankers of $106 million, sources in Kiev have confirmed. Interpipe, owned by Victor Pinchuk (image above) and his wife Elena, daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, is the largest steelmaker in the former Soviet Union to face bankruptcy and liquidation in recent years. According to sources close to Interpipe, who ask not to be identified, Interpipe’s debts now exceed $1.3 billion; its free cash on hand is less than $50 million.

The group says it continues to produce pipes at its new electric arc furnace plant at Dniepropetrovsk, despite market shut-out measures adopted by Russia, the CIS Customs Union, and the US, which have introduced, or plan shortly to impose penalty duties on pipe imports of 19.4% and 30.8%, respectively. These measures, compounding the generally depressed market demand for pipes, have led Fitch Ratings to slash Interpipe’s earnings estimate for this year by more than $100 million to $260 million, possibly less.
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by John Helmer - Friday, November 8th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

New evidence has surfaced from the Russian state shipping company Sovcomflot showing that the current chief executive Sergei Frank ordered the company’s lawyers to continue their attempts to prosecute his predecessor Dmitry Skarga in the London and Moscow courts, while telling the General Prosecutor in Moscow they were dropping their case against him.

Last week Frank’s eight-year campaign against Skarga came to an end when the Supreme Court, the highest of the English courts, dismissed Sovcomflot’s application to appeal against two High Court judgements and one Court of Appeal judgement, all exonerating Skarga of Sovcomflot’s allegations, and requiring Sovcomflot to pay more than £8 million ($13 million) in compensation of his costs. The latest episode of that story was reported here.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, November 7th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The Pelaco shirt company was a feature of my childhood for an advertising slogan that was so original, it hardly made sense. The idea was that if a native Australian, speaking pidgin English, recommended a Pelaco shirt because it fitted him so well, his recommendation would be credible to white shirt-wearers – even if the aboriginal didn’t wear trousers, and was therefore unlikely to acquire a Pelaco shirt in the first place, let alone a pair of Pelaco pyjamas. In short, the selling-point was preposterous. But fifty years later, the ad slogan is still memorable.

Oleg Tinkov, 45 years old, has the name and the style of advertising which have made him memorable, briefly, on the London roadshow circuit. His idea was that in a market which deeply devalues Russian banks, especially the state-owned ones; and suspects the short-term prospects of the commercial ones are getting poorer by the day, Tinkov would disguise his bank as if it were a credit card payment system, and promote his shares to the market fad for internet payment system companies like Luxoft and Qiwi. The stories of the latter share listings in the New York market can be read here and here. They aren’t banks at all, though in due course they may be threatened by Russian raiders who are banks. Since their initial public offerings (IPO) in June and September, Luxoft is up 71% and now has a market capitalization of $966 million; Qiwi is up 32%, with a market cap of $2.2 billion.
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by John Helmer - Monday, November 4th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The Supreme Court, the UK’s highest court of appeal, has dismissed an application from Sovcomflot, the state-owned Russian shipping group, to appeal against earlier judgements in favour of former chief executive, Dmitry Skarga (right). A three-judge panel issued its ruling on October 29, saying Sovcomflot’s application “does not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance…bearing in mind that the case has already been the subject of judicial decision and reviewed on appeal.”
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by John Helmer - Thursday, October 31st, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The Greenland government is about to open court proceedings against Greenpeace for attempts to occupy an offshore oil rig two years ago, the chief police prosecutor in Nuuk, Morten Nielsen, has disclosed. Russian sources say that Gazpromneft or parent Gazprom may be considering a similar move. These legal actions are targeted at Greenpeace as an organization. Until now, only individual members of Greenpeace have been prosecuted – in 2010 and 2011 cases in Greenland, when altogether 24 individuals were arrested, jailed, convicted and fined; and in proceedings now under way in Murmansk for 30 Greenpeace members; they are currently in prison awaiting trial on Russian charges for an attempt to board the Gazpromneft oil platform Prirazlomnaya, in the Pechora Sea, on September 18.

Their vessel, the 38-year old motor yacht Arctic Sunrise, registered in The Netherlands, is under arrest in Murmansk port. For details of its position, see here.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 30th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Private letters from foreign governments to President Vladimir Putin usually go into the Secret box. Applications by foreign governments for large-value arms deals from the Russian state exporter, Rosoboronexport, usually go to the Security Council of the Russian Federation for review, and there they are kept in the Top Secret box. The Council, chaired by Putin, includes his chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov; the heads of the intelligence and security agencies; the Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, the Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and others. Nikolai Patrushev has been the secretary of the Council since 2008; before that he headed the Federal Security Service. The Council has a website and office address, but no press spokesman, no email address, and no telephone number.

Exactly why such a silent, professionally cautious group should be so careless as to advertise publicly that they are negotiating a large arms sale to Libya to help the government in Tripoli put down the local opposition is inexplicable – unless they were testing the Libyans to prove they can deliver what the Kremlin wants from that benighted place. Did they fail to anticipate the outcome might be an armed attack on the Russian Embassy in Tripoli, and the forced evacuation of the embassy staff? Read on.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, October 29th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

“Greenpeace has broken the safety zone. Greenpeace activists have forced their entry into the drilling rig. This constitutes an obvious illegal act that disregards the democratic rules. It furthermore constitutes a severe violation of the safety regulations put in place to protect human lives and the environment. The Greenpeace action [is] a very grave and illegal attack on constitutional rights. It is highly disturbing that Greenpeace in its chase for media attention with all measures breaks the safety regulations put in place to protect people and the environment.”

If that sounds like a statement issued by the Murmansk prosecutor, the Investigative Committee of the General Prosecutor, Gazpromneft, or the Kremlin, you’d be mistaken. In fact it’s a statement by Kuupik Kleist, premier of Greenland, after his police had arrested a Greenpeace group which had attempted to occupy an oil drilling rig off the coast of Greenland. The date was more than three years ago, on August 31, 2010. The Greenland prosecutor also arrested a helicopter Greenpeace had hired to drop its members on to the rig, which was operated by Cairn Energy.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, October 24th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Once in a blue moon it is crystal clear – McChrystal clear, for reason shortly to be explained — why Anglo-American warmaking is bound to fail, and why Russian resistance to it – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Chechnya, Georgia, Libya, Syria – is the model the rest of the world should be following. As if dropped from the sky, spilled from the satchel of the Supreme Allied Commander, or hacked from the computers of the NSA and GCHQ, a book of warmaking advice has appeared, saluted by allied commanders as a work of genius in the Clausewitz mould. (That’s as if Germans, living or dead, have the right to teach the methods of aggressive war without earning another round of defeats on the battlefield and in the war crimes tribunal.)

Emile Simpson was in the British Army’s Royal Gurka Rifles from 2006 to 2012 where he was a platoon commander, spoke Nepalese, and served three combat tours in Afghanistan. Over the past two years he was paid to swap his sword for pen, writing a book called War from the Ground Up; this is sponsored by an outfit at Cambridge University called the Centre for Rising Powers, and published by Hurst & Company, a small London publisher which has turned out four books on Russia over 45 years, none too bad.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 23rd, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A mystery company in London, doing millions of dollars’ worth of mystery business for United Company Rusal, has reappeared after being struck off the UK Companies Register in June for failure to report its annual accounts. Except that now the company auditor says he can’t explain the revenue and cost claims, debts, loans, investment outlay and losses, and administrative expenses of $2.4 million for a company with zero employees and two empty shell companies as “members”. The auditor, a one-man, three-year old business with no telephone number, has also pulled a fast one, telling UK Companies House he has lodged accounts for the years to October 31, 2011, and the following year 2012; in fact there is just one set of accounts for 2012, filed twice, while the file for 2011 is missing.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013
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