By John Helmer, Moscow
After claims a week ago that the Daily Mail newspaper and its publisher were expecting to go to trial next month on a libel claim by Nathaniel Rothschild relating to the Russian aluminium business, it has now been revealed that Rothschild has exposed an even more secret business deal he was attempting to pull off with Oleg Deripaska, with hand-holding assistance from Lord Peter Mandelson. This one in Russian gold and silver-mining.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Nathaniel Rothschild (right, pointing) has told the UK High Court that a London newspaper report claiming he had tried ingratiating himself with Oleg Deripaska (centre) was defamatory, and that as a result of the publication he had been “seriously damaged in his character and reputation and has suffered considerable distress, embarrassment and injury to his feelings”. A trial on the claims has been ordered to commence in the High Court next month. The defendant is Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail in London.
The Daily Mail report appeared on May 22, 2010. Rothschild, calling himself “a member of the well known Rothschild banking family [and] a financier with substantial international business interests”, filed suit on July 7, 2010. He gave his address as Riedweg 18, in Klosters, Switzerland.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Christopher Hitchens, who died on Thursday at 62 years of age, described me many years ago as “an old personal enemy of mine”.
Hitchens wore the inimical declarations of others as self-awarded Victoria Crosses, as if his bravado under the fire he inflicted deserved more than the money he was paid to pull the trigger. But Hitchens was sparing in the identification of others as his personal enemies. Search though I have through the back-indexes of his collected re-publications on London bookshop tables – buy one, get one free — the only other person Hitchens picked out in print as his personal enemy appears to have been Osama bin Laden. The reason Hitchens put the two of us on a par deserves brief record as Hitchens goes to his grave covered by encomiums from his accomplices in a career of duplicity and meretriciousness.
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Э.Мацкявичюс: Владимир Владимирович, есть вопрос, поступивший на сайт программы, он, отчасти, продолжает тему, поднятую Александром Андреевичем: “Читаю сообщение о суде в Лондоне и думаю, когда украденные у народа деньги перестанут обогащать Англию?” Я точно не поручусь, но, видимо, имеется в виду суд между Абрамовичем и Березовским. (more…)
By John Helmer, Moscow
Alrosa has been attempting to boost its share price, following the start to regular share trading on the Moscow MICEX exchange at the beginning of this month. On December 13, the company released a forecast for next year of rising mine volumes and higher revenues and profits.
But four days earlier, on December 9, Alrosa’s chief executive Fyodor Andreyev (image left) met Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for his first-ever solo session with the head of government (image right). While Putin meets from time to time with heads of the Sakha republic, where Alrosa’s mines are concentrated – the last of those was on January 18 of this year — Putin has not met one on one with a chief executive of the company since 2004. That was when he discussed moving the then chief executive, Vyacheslav Shtirov, from the company to the presidency of the Sakha republic.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Shipments of Norwegian salmon and trout to Russia, the biggest global consumer of Norwegian fish, have been illegally restricted by the Russian government veterinary and phyto-sanitary inspectorate, Rosselkhozdnadzor (RSKN), according to a report by the government’s competition watchdog, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS).
The FAS told Fairplay that regulations issued by RSKN limit imports of the fish to Russia to companies on lists accepted by the Norwegian government, and submitted for complementary approval by RSKN. This cumbersome administrative procedure is unlawful, according to the FAS, because it restricts free trade in the Russian market.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Russia’s competition watchdog believes that a merger between two of the country’s top steelmakers, Evraz and Severstal, is a “pipe dream”, and will veto it if it is attempted. The swift, explicit reaction from one of the Russian government’s top market regulators indicates there has been no preliminary signal from the Kremlin of backing for the merger, announced in a carefully contrived placement in the Financial Times of London yesterday.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Investbank, the Russian banking group which was formerly the property of Vladimir Antonov, was asked to clarify its position in relation to the charges now pending against Antonov in Lithuania; the extradition case under way in London; and balance-sheet examinations of banks associated with Antonov in Lithuania, Latvia, and elsewhere. Here is the story.
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| ERIC KRAUS & ALEXANDER TEDDY krausmoscow@yahoo.com DESK NOTE 12 DECEMBER 2011 Russian Facebook Protest – A Field of Dreams |
By John Helmer, Moscow
While Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska are hard at work changing the British courts’ interpretation of the law on corruption, Vladimir Antonov has come along to challenge the British law on asylum and extradition.
Antonov, along with his Lithuanian partner Raimondas Baranauskas, were arrested in London on November 23, and charged in connexion with a Lithuanian extradition warrant. In Lithuania they are accused of embezzlement of several hundred million dollars from Bank Snoras, the bank they control in Lithuania, and the second largest in that country. The forensic auditors are reported to have found that Snoras’s books are short by $1.4 billion.
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