By John Helmer, Moscow

Russia is big, so when people make mistakes about Russia, they make big ones.

Take this one, for example, by the self-proclaimed genius of the opposite of investigative journalism – advertising. Asked if he planned to open one of his international ad agency offices in Russia, David Ogilvy responded: “what are we going to sell? Fur hats!”

There’s no permanent damage to reputation in making mistakes if you can recognize them later on, acknowledge them, learn from them. It also stands to reason that the bigger the mistake, the bigger the concession, and maybe the more valuable the lesson.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Sunday, March 4th, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

Does the Russian vodka lobby fear or hate beer so much, it’s thought up a devious customs regulation to make the latter more expensive, and thus less drinkable among penniless Russians? And are the vodka schemers so devious, they have hidden their intention by introducing the customs regulation in the guise of standardizing (harmonizing is the bureaucrats’ term) the different customs rules of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, which together comprise a single customs union these days?
(more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, March 2nd, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

It isn’t known whether Alexei Mordashov is religious enough to have studied the Proverbs section of the Old Testament. But as a guide to mining in Africa, he ought to have read this one: “Whoever digs a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolls a stone, it will return on him.”

The reason this might have occurred to Mordashov and his Severstal mining division is that the pit he dug for himself in the Republic of Guinea at the LEFA goldmining concession, he is now about to fall into at the Putu iron-ore project in Liberia.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Thursday, March 1st, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

There once was a young man called Marko Papic (centre), living in Austin, Texas. Each morning he went to work at a desk paid for by an older man named George Friedman (right), the owner of a company called Stratfor. That was a money-for-secrets scheme hatched by Friedman and his friends (left) in the US Government.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 28th, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

When the archaeologists of the next millennium excavate, they will find the evidence of a tectonic shift and turning-point in Russian history that took place in the two months between December 28 and February 25. That’s from the day Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed government order number VP-P13-9308, and instructed Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to supervise compliance; to the day when Alexei Navalny listed the most powerful oligarchs in the country (Switzerland too) as the target of the political opposition — after Putin wins the presidential election.

Navalny’s speech at last Saturday’s St. Petersburg rally marks the first time the oligarch system, and the oligarchs as individuals rather than Putin, have been made the public focus of the opposition movements. Navalny himself named the lines of business to identify the individuals, though he didn’t name names.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Monday, February 27th, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

Eating sheep’s balls is an acquired taste, though if you’re from the Caucasus or Azerbaijan, the taste comes with your mother’s milk, so to speak. If you are an Australian politician, complaining in public that someone else is biting yours is an everyday thing.

Australia has always been sensitive below its belt, where the colonial and imperial powers – Great Britain, the United States, Japan (briefly), and China for the next millennium – like to keep a tight grip. The former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, has a hands-on relationship with China, too – his brother Greg operates a fortune cookie business in Beijing. That hasn’t inhibited Kevin from promising Washington he is ready to go to war with China if the US Government thinks that’s a good thing.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

I know, I know. It’s old fashioned to regard the celebration of February 23 as Red Army Day. And for all the awards heaped on my head for defending the Fatherland from its enemies, foreign and domestic, on this anniversary I plead paucity of means, and defer to those who have recently written to the Prime Minister promising to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in the Fatherland’s furthest reaches – the Arctic seabed, no less. Even when they are so severely wounded financially that they lack the money to honour their promises, I honour their intentions.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

It has been obvious for some time that Vladimir Kekhman’s banana financials were so rotten, his Joint Fruit Company (JFC) was republishing its second-quarter financial results as if they were the third quarter figures, postponing the fourth quarter and full-year releases, and refusing response to the question Why?

It has also been obvious that Kekhman has been trying not to pay a mounting bill from the UK High Court in London. There since last August, Star Reefers, the owner of the three freighters JFC chartered to carry banana cargoes from JFC’s Ecuadorian plantations to St. Petersburg, has won a compensation award of $16.3 million; additional costs and penalties; and judicial orders against Kekhman personally, along with his appointees at JFC, to disclose where they have put their money, and to freeze JFC transactions with funds the court has required to be paid to Star. Other litigation to seize JFC’s containers in the US, as well as threaten seizure of its banana boxes as they move on Maersk freighters, is also pursuing the fleet-footed Kekhman.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
No Comments »

(more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

In the memoirs of the great courtesans, much fondness is expressed toward the size of their patrons’ pockets, but never the size (or lack of it) of their male members. Morgan Stanley lacks that kind of discretion.

If you read the report issued on February 17 by the investment bank’s Moscow and London branches on Alexei Mordashov’s Nord Gold, the place to start is below the waist, as it were. “In the next 3 months,” runs the small print of the required US regulatory disclosures, “Morgan Stanley expects to receive or intends to seek compensation for investment banking services from…Nordgold…Within the last 12 months, Morgan Stanley has provided or is providing investment banking services to, or has an investment banking client relationship with …Nordgold…Within the last 12 months, Morgan Stanley has either provided or is providing non-investment banking, securities-related services to and/or in the past has entered into an agreement to provide services or has a client relationship with… Nordgold.”
(more…)

by John Helmer - Monday, February 20th, 2012
No Comments »