By John Helmer, Moscow
In the wake of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s negotiations in Washington this week, US State Department documents have leaked from 2009 and 2010, revealing that American and other international banks were given an ultimatum by Deputy Prime Ministers Igor Shuvalov and Igor Sechin – either roll over the debts Oleg Deripaska had run up, or else the Kremlin would see they would get nothing at all.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
According to the Kremlin website, on July 11 President Dmitry Medvedev met with “representatives of major private and state-owned companies”. The Kremlin website has identified them:
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By John Helmer, Moscow
If Vnesheconombank (VEB), the state bailout bank chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, really has agreed to pay $5.3 billion for the 80% control shareholding of Raspadskaya, the coking coalminer, then this is going to be Roman Abramovich’s lucky day. His second lucky day, if to count the September 2005 transaction when state-owned Gazprom paid $13 billion for Abramovich’s 72.6% stake in the oil company Sibneft. Well, it’s everyone’s lucky day, because Abramovich is known to be a sharing kind of man. With almost everyone.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
During this week’s Washington, DC, visit by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, a mid-level State Department official appears to be the key to whether Oleg Deripaska’s lobbying campaign to recover his US visa will succeed.
Dan Russell, who served in the US Embassy in Moscow between 2003 and 2008, is now Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe. In a file just released for internet access by the US Department of Justice, Russell has been named by Deripaska’s lobbyists as having been on the receiving end of a spate of telephone-calls and emails – more than any US official has ever received from the Deripaska lobbyists to date; in the public record, that is.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
As Canadian stock market regulators open their first-ever investigation into listing practices by Russian companies trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the chief executive of High River Gold (HRG) has warned shareholders against reading reports appearing on this website.
A Canadian shareholder of HRG has received an email letter from Konstantin Soboloevsky, the chief executive officer of High River Gold based in Toronto. Alexei Mordashov owns about 73% of HRG; 27% of the shares are held by minority shareholders, most of them Canadians.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Brian Gilbertson, the leading South African mining entrepreneur, has launched a new stage of his investment in the Faberge jewellery marque with the first release for sale since 1917 of Faberge jewelled eggs, designed by the family of the original Russian court jeweller, Peter Carl Faberge. Four of the eggs, including a solid diamond encrusted piece, were displayed in London today. The full collection went on display in Paris yesterday.
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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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