By John Helmer, Moscow
There’s not much of a market in used testicles.
When Jonathan Oppenheimer (right image) was obliged to sell his last week, ending the Oppenheimer family’s century-old diamond business, those closest to the affair in Johannesburg sniffed that Jonathan Oppenheimer’s wife Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer had so gravely damaged the value of the De Beers brand, her father-in-law, Nicholas Oppenheimer, was obliged to accept a discount buyout from Anglo American Corporation.
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For readers who have been experiencing interruptions of internet connexion and seeing instead notices of 404 error, the explanation is a series of denial-of-service (DOS) attacks launched against this website in an attempt to stop publication. Technical evidence reveals that the attacker began bombarding the website server about 20 minutes after a story was published last Thursday, October 27, regarding Oleg Deripaska’s latest attempts to overturn the ban on his entry to the US. Here’s the story again.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Carbonated water was an 18th century invention in England, associated with the brewing of beer. Fizz came in just over a hundred years later in New Orleans, when carbonated water was added to a cocktail of gin, lemon, lime, egg white and sugar, stirred. After years of trying fizzy drinks from the US, the Russian drinker appears finally to have decided enough is enough, at least for bubbles. Coca-Cola is discovering that its growth in Russia now depends on its Russian branded juice beverages, while sales demand for Coca-Cola-branded products appears to be declining.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
You need to know that a conflict of interest is the first step on the road to corruption. If you don’t; and if you also think that unzipping your fly in public isn’t indecent exposure, so long as you think the onlookers will be impressed by what you’re showing off, there’s no invite for you at this party.
This one is for the last print journalists in the world for whom the trade of digging up and publishing conflicts of interest, recording that the emperor’s fly is open (without clothes, dripping money, etc.), is fast dying out, but who keep sending their invoices for the truth.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
There is every reason to read and reread the Tintin books by Hergé, and even more for boycotting the film just released by Steven Spielberg. The essay by Tom McCarthy is one of a hattrick by the London Guardian to rubbish what Spielberg has done.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Arkady (right image) and Boris Rotenberg are under investigation by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) for running a cartel and price-rigging to cheat Gazprom, their longstanding business partner and patron.
This is unusual for several reasons. One of them is that the Rotenbergs neither produce the goods in trade targeted by FAS, nor are they the end-buyer and end-user, Gazprom. So how can the go-between between buyer and seller be capable, let alone culpable of running a multi-billion dollar cartel? Igor Artemyev, head of FAS (left image), has announced that he’s going to the mat to find out.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Oleg Deripaska, denied regular visa entry into the US for many years on US evidence of his business practices, has claimed in a Moscow press announcement this week that the barrier has been lifted. It hasn’t. Instead, he’s being escorted through a trapdoor.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
The latest announcement by Kommersant newspaper of a deal in which the Government of Guinea relieves United Company Rusal of the billion-dollar liabilities it was facing for its bauxite exporting and alumina smelting activities in the African republic isn’t what it’s meant to look.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
And now for a Classical breather.
According to the Greek myth, Orion was a giant hunter who could walk across the Mediterranean. One evening he pulled one of those drunken turns that give dinner parties a bad name – he tried to make a dessert out of the daughter of his host, Oenepion. So Oenepion stuck the cheese-knife into Orion’s eyes, chucking him out of the dining-room and off his island. At that point, Hephaestus, the god of high technology (blacksmithing at the time), took pity on the big boy, and gave him a small one, Kedalion, to stand on his shoulders and guide him eastwards, where eventually, the sun healed Orion’s eyesight. He then re-marched westward for revenge against Oenepion.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
A leading shipbroker confirms that Suleiman Kerimov’s 90-metre motor yacht Ice is for sale at €200 million. “It is quietly on the market, but it is not being actively marketed,” the source revealed on Monday, days after the sale notice went up for Kerimov’s French beach house at €20 million.
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