By John Helmer, Moscow

If seated in the dark at the Bolshoi Theatre, even a man of consuming narcissism as Boris Yeltsin was could tell the tights from the tutus. But Yeltsin saw himself as the prima donna, battementing and glissading into the old tsar’s box, Dress Circle centre front. At the Bolshoi, Stalin preferred the stage-side box, screened from the audience by drapery, with the secret door set into the wall of the buffet; that way he got a close-up of the good bits, and could come and go as he chose. Stalin’s taste in music was also superior to Yeltsin’s: he could tell the difference between harmony and noise, and – drunk or sober – Stalin could dance.

There is nothing particularly Russian about the habit tsars, dukes, and their hangers-on had of patronising companies of nubile young men and women; trying them out in skimpy or bulgy costumes on stage; and then trying them on in bed. The imperial ballet theatres of Russia – the Bolshoi in Moscow, the Mariinsky in St. Petersburg – were sex farms, harems without the cost of squabbles over inheritance. To the Russian court then they were what seminaries and convents are to the Catholic priesthood today, or Her Britannic Majesty’s stables to her Guardsmen. The imperial Japanese had special terms for it, acknowledging the use-by period for bedmates, er artists, lasted for no more than ten years before replacements were auditioned; if homosexuality and paedophilia aren’t likely to offend, look up 男色 (nanshoku) and 若衆 (wakashu).
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by John Helmer - Sunday, March 24th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

When Nathaniel Rothschild sued for libel in the UK High Court in 2011, he was claiming that a report in the Daily Mail, published by Associated Newspapers on May 22, 2010, had libelled him for reporting that he had taken Peter Mandelson on a private jet-plane trip to Moscow to eat with Oleg Deripaska, then a banya with same, plus more eating, talking, and sight-seeing in the Siberian smelter town of Abakan. The reported events had occurred in January of 2005. The circumstances suggested a conflict of interest on Mandelson’s part, the newspaper angled. Rothschild went to court to prove that he would never do such a thing to a friend (Mandelson), and that it was defamation of his character to suggest he might. That was the first sting.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, March 21st, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The US, Germany, Turkey and the NATO allies think they have almost all the ordnance required to produce regime change in Syria, as they had in Libya. But they don’t appear to have the €5 billion required to do the trick in Cyprus, after the regime change the Cypriots themselves had voted into power a month ago. Saturday’s gambit, to seize this money from Russian and other depositors in Cyprus banks, appeared a safe bet in Brussels because apparently influential Russians – First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov – had signalled their willingness to go along.

But Shuvalov and Siluanov are clerks, no-counts politically. The one Russian who counts has now been presented by the western alliance with an opportunity to effect a strategic power shift in the Mediterranean at minimal cost upfront and little forward risk. It’s an object lesson in the greater value of money over arms in grand strategy.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 20th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The share price of United Company Rusal, the Russian aluminium monopoly, has dropped into the three Hong Kong-dollar range for the first time. In three years of its stock market history, the company’s chief executive, Oleg Deripaska, has let slip about $13 billion in value, two-thirds of Rusal’s original worth. At a current market capitalization of $7.9 billion, Rusal’s equity is now a fraction of its $10.8 billion net debt. Its debt to equity ratio is almost 10x; that is the worst ratio of any Russian oligarch, far ahead of second-placed Igor Zyuzin of Mechel at 7.6x.

How can such a record be made to appear other than it is?

You don’t have to know much about dynastic history – the process by which one greedy thug kills another, and then orders his public relations agents to depict the outcome as God’s will, and his lawyers to sue anyone who says otherwise. Look at the top two faces – it’s obvious, isn’t it, which of them won the English kingship in battle in 1485, killing the other, and sticking a dagger in his buttocks on the corpse’s way to an unmarked grave?
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by John Helmer - Monday, March 18th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Starting sometime this morning and ending by lunch hour, President Vladimir Putin called an urgent meeting of government ministers and advisors responsible for the economy. Reporters were not allowed at the scene; no list of those attending has been released by the Kremlin; no official photographs have been published. The Kremlin website discloses no other meetings on the President’s morning agenda. The announcement of what happened at the meeting is tagged 12:30. “Vladimir Putin,” the official announcement says, “met with the officials of the Presidential Executive Office and the presidential aides and advisers responsible for economic matters to discuss the economic situation in the Eurozone, in particular in Cyprus. The President said that the decision to impose an additional tax on bank deposits in Cyprus, if it goes ahead, would be an unfair, unprofessional and dangerous step.”
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by John Helmer - Monday, March 18th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Oleg Deripaska’s airplane touched down in Cyprus on February 28. He wasn’t on holiday; that came a fortnight later, when he, his plane and his boat had a reunion at Male, in the Maldives. Deripaska left Cyprus on March 2. It isn’t known what was in the luggage offloaded on arrival, or taken on board when the plane departed. Maybe cash, if during the time in Cyprus an informant warned that the newly elected government of Nicos Anastasiades was about to accept a European Union bailout requirement hitting all Cyprus bank accounts with a 9.9% tax on amounts above €100,000; 6.79% on accounts below that amount.

Timing is everything. Eighteen months ago, in September 2010, Alexander Abramov became a citizen of Cyprus. Abramov, who is the second shareholder of the Evraz steel and mining group after Roman Abramovich and his Millhouse holding, was granted naturalization after then-Cyprus Interior Minister Neoclis Sylikiotis announced to the Cyprus cabinet that Abramov was being rewarded because he had “offered [note carefully that word] the highest level of service to the Republic of Cyprus, and considering his business activities, naturalisation is in the public interest.”
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by John Helmer - Sunday, March 17th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Who is Mark Kurtser, and what does he do for an honest living?

According to the Kremlin, when he was introduced to President Vladimir Putin last August, Kurtser was Chief Physician of the Centre for Family Planning and Reproduction. Two months later, on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), Kurtser sold a bloc of his shares in a company he established called MD Medical Group (LSE ticker MDMG:LI). This is the first medical services company from Russia to be listed on the LSE. Kurtser, who started with 100% of the shares, sold 35% to the market; took about $100 million in cash for himself; and kept 65% of the shareholding. The umbilical cord for that flotation was the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a state funded cash-box which refuses to disclose details of its portfolio or operations. It paid about $50 million, and bought roughly one share of the six on offer.

In the five months since listing, MDMG’s share price has jumped 40%, easily beating most listed Russian stocks — with the possible exception of Abrau-Durso, the champagne maker. Kurtser’s company now has a market capitalization of $1.3 billion, so he is worth, on paper, $830 million. In point of fact, Kurtser is Russia’s leading manufacturer of… babies.
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by John Helmer - Friday, March 15th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

From small seeds, big truths can be cultivated, pressed, packaged, and retailed profitably. Lies, too.

The elder daughter of Uzbekistan’s president, Islam Karimov, Gulnara Karimova, was so named because in the Uzbek language Gulnara signifies the flower of the pomegranate. The Persians say the same thing.

Last week, after months of negotiation with newspapers worldwide, Karimova issued two press interviews in Switzerland, where she is Uzbekistan’s representative to the Geneva branch of the United Nations. Her effort has been arranged before prosecutors in Switzerland and Sweden file public indictments against Uzbek, Swiss and Swedish company officials for corruption offences, including bribery and money-laundering. They acknowledge they are cooperating with each other; they may be cooperating secretly with the Prosecutor-General of Russia. The deadline for the opening of the Swedish criminal dossier in the Stockholm District Court is July 25.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, March 12th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The UK High Court and the Court of Appeal have now ruled three times to dismiss almost eight years of legal claims by state shipping company Sovcomflot, adding up (with interest and costs) to about one billion dollars. On top, Sovcomflot’s chief executive Sergei Frank (image left, left, tree) has been judged by the British justices to have been personally dishonest; to have procured dishonest or perjured testimony; and last week in the Court of Appeal, to have pursued vindictive claims.

There are two ways for Sovcomflot to avoid the ignominy. The first is to keep appealing, and yesterday (March 11), the Sovcomflot subsidiary Novorossiysk Shipping Company (Novoship) did just that. The second is to persuade the maritime media internationally, and the Russian business media in Moscow, that nothing has happened. For the time being, the media being more susceptible than the judges, the news blackout is proving to be more successful.
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by John Helmer - Monday, March 11th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow

For the second time in its short history, United Company Rusal, the loss-making aluminium monopoly run by Oleg Deripaska, has been ordered out of an international court with the ruling that it has acted unlawfully to seize confidential data of its critics. On March 1, by order of the District Court of Nicosia, Cyprus, Rusal has been ordered to destroy all of the information it had illegally taken. By a second order, Rusal has been required to pay all of the costs of the proceeding to date.

The award of costs against Rusal this time is especially significant. Those who have been the targets of Rusal litigation in the past — they include Russian and Tajik smelter operators, international aluminium traders, and Deripaska’s patron, Michael Cherney (Chernoy) — charge that Deripaska pursues personal feuds employing the company’s lawyers and shareholder resources. By multiplying cases in several international jurisdictions simultaneously, former Rusal lawyers say, he is attempting to crush his targets with legal fees, while exposing the company, not himself, to the costs, losses, and damages.
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by John Helmer - Saturday, March 9th, 2013
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