By John Helmer, Moscow
The greatest of the great Canadians, Glenn Gould was, by his own admission, a lover of driving big, fast cars on the open road. When criticized for his rule-breaking, he acknowledged: “I know I’m at fault for driving through red lights occasionally. But look at the number of times I’ve stopped at the green, and never got credit for it.”
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Naivety is not what the British establishment can ever be accused of. Certainly never towards Rupert Murdoch, whose British nickname has been the Dirty Digger — a reference to his business practices and to his Australian nationality.
So yesterday in the House of Commons, when the Conservative Party and Labor Party leaderships claimed to have just woken up to what reprobates Rupert , his son James, and the senior management of his UK newspapers are – in relation to a telephone hacking and police bribes scandal – their statements drip with cynicism. Ed Miliband, the Labor party leader, led the chorus of hypocrites, referring to a News Ltd. Executive whom Murdoch himself continues to defend: “[she] “should take responsibility and stand down”. Actually, what Miliband means is that she should play scapegoat for Murdoch, and suffer nothing more serious than retirement on pension.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
If you’re feeling peckish, but the price of fish is too high to swallow, whom do you call?
Gennady Timchenko (right image), that’s who – the man who has settled with several English newspapers out of court that he’s not a friend of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and benefits commercially in no way at all from his political and administrative contacts with people like Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Oleg Deripaska’s EN+ holding has been eliminated from the international bidding for Tavan Tolgoi, Mongolia’s largest mining project. Instead, according to US diplomatic sources, the Mongolian Government has decided to award shares in the project to the Russian Railways consortium, an American coalminer, and a Chinese group.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Russia’s state pipeline company Transneft went public yesterday morning with an attack on the Prime Minister of Bulgaria for dragging his feet over the trans-Balkan pipeline proposed between Burgas and Alexandropouli, on the Aegean Sea. Transneft chief executive Nikolai Tokarev was reported by Moscow news wires as saying: “God save anyone from partners like our Bulgarian friends.”
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By John Helmer, Moscow
They said it could never be done, but Alexei Mordashov has done it!
Having failed to buy out the 27% Canadian minority shareholders in High River Gold (HRG), who refuse to sell at his price, Mordashov, owner of 73% of the shares, has hidden the annual general meeting where noone but he could find it – and where no shareholder could ask awkward questions. This first-ever hidden AGM has been arranged without audio or video or even telephone connection to the outside world, so that not even the investment institutions of London, who in February rejected Mordashov’s attempted initial public offering of Nord Gold shares, could listen in.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
The disclosures by disgruntled New York law enforcers in the US press today, revealing that the accusing chamber-maid in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) affair is a career liar with thousands of recent dollars in her bank account, puts an end to the trumped-up prosecution. Whether Strauss-Kahn returns to be President of France is up to him. President, oops Prime Minister Vladimir Putin turns out to be right once again.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Yesterday’s report on the Guinean President’s ultimatum to Rusal to use or lose the giant Dian-Dian bauxite deposit has drawn fresh sources with additional information, confirming the deterioration in Rusal’s hold on its concession agreement.
According to Vladislav Soloviev, Oleg Deripaska’s first deputy at Rusal headquarters in Moscow, his company is currently in talks with the Government of Guinea on terms for developing Dian-Dian. “We are ready to start to develop the deposit, but we need to solve the problems with infrastructure and agree on railroad use with the government,” Soloviev is reported as saying.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Now it’s official – the French, British, Americans, Chinese and Indians are all behind Guinean President Alpa Conde’s decision to revoke the Russian concession for the world’s largest unmined bauxite mining deposit, Dian-Dian, and hit the current concession holder, United Company Rusal, with back-tax and fraud claims, plus interest and penalties, for about $1 billion.
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I have long wanted to comment on the investment climate, which was discussed at the meeting of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with the international railway elite, representatives of financial institutions and investment banks in the framework of the Forum 1520.
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