by John Helmer - Sunday, September 2nd, 2012
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by John Helmer - Sunday, August 26th, 2012
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Victor Vekselberg won a major UK High Court action on Friday, and the presiding judge, Justice Guy Newey, has ordered that he should get his money’s worth returned. No ruling of fraud was allowed. The amount may turn out to be less than Vekselberg has spent on lawyers and experts over the 25 months the case has been pending.

This isn’t the case currently under way in the London Court of International Arbitration where Vekselberg is suing Oleg Deripaska for violation of the shareholder agreements on the basis of which the two of them have been directing United Company Rusal since its formation in 2006 and merger with Vekselberg’s Siberian Ural Aluminium (SUAL) in 2007. That case was first reported here. The proceedings are being conducted behind closed doors.
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by John Helmer - Sunday, July 29th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

There is a unique protection in the Ontario Business Corporations Act which may have Alexei Mordashov’s name written all over it. It’s called the oppression remedy.

What this does is to allow minority shareholders to go to court to challenge the votes and decisions of majority or control shareholders in a Canadian company, when the latter act in a way that is prejudicial, disadvantageous, or unfair to the former. The evidence and standard of unfairness can be decided by a court-ordered investigation of the company’s affairs and of the “reasonable expectations” of the shareholders. Such an investigation is the first thing a Canadian judge can do, before ruling on unfairness. What’s more, an applicant shareholder needs to convince the investigators, not of evidence of fraud or dishonesty, but of the “appearance” that the board of directors, control shareholders, or company management “unfairly disregard” the interests of the minority.
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by John Helmer - Sunday, July 29th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

It seems that this August Suleiman Kerimov will be holidaying with his Mother, as in Motherland.

A recent yachting news bulletin from the port of Bergen, Norway, reports that Kerimov’s motor yacht is “docked next to Bryggen, in walking distance to most of the attractions in the center of Bergen. The yacht ICE is registered in the Cayman Islands and was previously owned by Russian billionaire Suleyman Kerimov.” Kerimov had put the boat up for sale last year, when his New York lawyer, Eliot Lauer, claimed it wasn’t really his. Here’s the yacht-for-sale story, and here’s Kerimov’s response through his lawyer. But that was last autumn, when the going price for M/Y was €200 million.
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by John Helmer - Friday, July 27th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Once upon a time, Oleg Deripaska was the protégé of Mikhail Chernoy (Michael Cherney). In that relationship, Cherney, the older, taller one, called Deripaska, the younger, shorter one, Zaichik (“hare”). When he grew up, Cherney made him his business partner.

In the year 2000, the man who is today Deripaska’s principal Russian lawyer, strategist of all his litigation, advisor to the initial public offering of Rusal in 2010, and current member of the Rusal board, knew that Deripaska and Cherney were business partners. That is because he said so in filings to the federal US District Court for the Southern District of New York. The man’s name is Dmitry Afanasiev. In December 2000, he was one of the lawyers who filed this case:
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by John Helmer - Friday, July 27th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Tall stories told by newspapers and their reporters generally don’t start wars. But they do justify them in advance. Afterwards they protect the officials who start them from being prosecuted for war crimes.

On August 5, 1964, there was no truth in President Lyndon Johnson’s claim – reported by every major US newspaper – that there had been “open aggression on the high seas against the United States of America” by North Vietnamese gunboats in the Gulf of Tonkin. That’s because the US Navy destroyer Maddux had been inside North Vietnam’s territorial waters to pinpoint shore targets, after US and South Vietnamese naval vessels had opened fire on North Vietnamese islands in the area several days earlier. The August 4 reports of a gunboat attack on the Maddux “appear very doubtful”, according to a secret cable sent by the Maddux commander to his headquarters at the time. In retrospect, all the available evidence indicates that no attack took place. What is certain, however, is that the fiction was good enough for Johnson to get the US Congress to enact the August 7, 1964, resolution giving the US administration the warrant to start a full-scale invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces. The outcome is well-known. The US was defeated in that war. About 50,000 US soldiers returned in body bags, and about 3.8 million Vietnamese (10% of the population) went prematurely into the ground.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, July 26th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

You don’t have to be Mr Plod to suspect that Noddy isn’t playing fair.

More than half the Canadians who hold shares in High River Gold (HRG:CN), and who have resisted Alexei Mordashov’s buyout offers in the past, think he’s low-balling them again. Having driven up the share price to C$1.43, three cents over Mordashov’s latest offer price for his takeover of HRG, the sentiment in the share market is against Mordashov. Or is it?

On July 18 Nordgold (NORD:LI), which already owns about 75% of HRG, announced that it wants to buy the rest. Nordgold is listed on the London Stock Exchange; HRG on the Toronto Exchange. The former has a market capitalization of US$1.71 billion after listing in Moscow and London between December 2011 and January 2012. Since then it has lost more than 60% of its value.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 24th, 2012
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by John Helmer - Monday, July 23rd, 2012
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