Krissy, November 1994-December 9, 2011

by John Helmer - Sunday, December 11th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

On November 29, following up Russian media reports and after an investigation lasting a week, the Moscow Times published the following article, which speaks for itself. A week later, on December 7, the newspaper’s editor, Andrew McChesney, sent this letter:
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by John Helmer - Saturday, December 10th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

BHP Billiton (BHP), the world’s dominant producer of manganese, last week slashed the price of manganese for delivery to China, the world’s dominant consumer, by 14%, arousing the suspicion that the Big Australian is aiming to drive rival producers from the business, and when Chinese steelmaking is expected to revive next year, corner a larger share of the market. Ironically, the price action may also accelerate the exit of the Australian independent Consolidated Minerals from Australia, where costs are now close to the break-even level, towards African operations.
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by John Helmer - Friday, December 9th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

After the episode of the Louis Vuitton fountain-pen given in San Francisco in friendship, not favour, Dmitry Rybolovlev (left) has redirected his generosity to another seaport, this time Monaco. There the welcome appears to have been decidedly warmer than he got in California, where Rybolovlev said he was thinking of investing ; or in Florida, where he’s said he was thinking of living. The weather is also warmer in Monaco than in Geneva, where there has been icy wind blowing at Rybolovlev from the cantonal divorce court, which has issued a freeze order over Rybolovlev’s worldwide assets , and a contempt of court threat against Swiss reporters for reporting the claims and counter-claims, and legal manoeuvering.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, December 8th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The relationship between taste and power is what Karl Marx would have called dialectical; for today’s Russian oligarchs that’s a red flag – in the race track, not the Marxist sense of the term.

The oligarchs don’t mind showing off their taste in foreign places and foreign newspapers; inside Russia they show a guarded respect for the Nicholas Fouquet example. He was the treasurer and prime minister of French King Louis XIV, whose royally paid-for rise to wealth was turned into a grand chateau near Paris , Vaux le Vicomte (image below). That was so richly ornamented and stocked – ostentatious in contemporary terms — that it made the king jealous, as well as fearful for his own treasury and power. So he packed Fouquet off to jail to serve as an example for his fellow courtiers and concessionaires for 19 years — the rest of Fouquet’s life. Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s education apparently didn’t stretch to that story of 17th century France. His stretch in prison might be long enough to read up.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

When Oleg Deripaska was completing his takeover of Russian Aluminium (Rusal) by buying out his partner, Roman Abramovich, the two of them agreed to arrange legal advice on the transaction from one of the leading mergers and acquisitions lawyers in London. But after she began probing the deal on her suspicion of money-laundering, she was fired. When a Swiss bank began having similar suspicions and asking awkward questions, it too was removed from the deal.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The Financial Times, a London newspaper, recommends that under your Christmas tree you put a book called Snowdrops by A.D. Miller, who was the Moscow correspondent of The Economist between 2004 and 2007. According to the recommendation, “it’s a sinister, seductive read that paints a murky moral portrait of the new capitalist Russia.” That omits to say the book is fiction.

The FT also recommends you read a story called “A Realm Fit for a Tsar” by Catherine Belton, and illustrated with a picture of Vladimir Putin wearing reflecting sunglasses. Published on December 1, with tags “Analysis” at top right and “FT investigation” at top left, that too is fiction. Behind the shades it’s difficult to tell the novel from reality.
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by John Helmer - Monday, December 5th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Monkeys throw their excrement at their enemies – this is well-known among zoologists. But it happens only when monkeys are caged, not in the wild. The reason for this is obvious — free-ranging monkeys instinctively run away from their shit as quickly as possible, to evade predators. But if they are in captivity, their shit is all they have handy against enemies who aren’t predatory. Shit-tossing is a kind of simian revenge.
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by John Helmer - Saturday, December 3rd, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Michael Wilson, a Kazakhstan-based lawyer specializing in mining and natural resources, has won a judgement from Australia’s highest court, reinstating a December 2009 award of more than $11 million. The five-year record of litigation has nailed three Australian lawyers — John Emmott, Robert Nicholls, and David Slater – for nicking clients, business, shares and profits from Wilson’s law firm MWP. According to the court rulings, the defendants secretly moonlighted to earn fees and share bonuses for transactions involving several major Kazakh resource projects — Sunkar Resources’s Chilisai phosphate project; Frontier Mining’s Benkala copper project; Roxi Petroleum; Max Petroleum; two other Central Asian mining projects, Urals Gold and Ablai; and four projects tied to these and other operators in the same region — Karamandybas (oil and gas), Ravninnoye (oil), Beibars Munai (oil), Lancaster, and Kangamiut (seafoods).
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by John Helmer - Friday, December 2nd, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In American legend, Johnny Appleseed is the epitome of self-sacrificing kindness and charity to his fellow man. But he didn’t exactly give away his apple seeds. Johnny was a professional nurseryman – he gave seeds to friends and neighbours for planting in nurseries. The concessionaires and stakeholders then sold the trees and apples for commerce; Johnny kept the land. When he died in 1845, he was reputed to have accumulated an estate of more than 1,200 acres, not counting titles to land he’d forgotten about or lost. When the apple business went bust, Johnny stayed rich; his stakeholders weren’t so fortunate.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, December 1st, 2011
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