By John Helmer in Moscow
Runaway inflation and unemployment rates are the conventional killers of campaigns for reelection in the democracies, such as the US and the UK. But in the autocracies, the rising price of bread (or rice), leading to hoarding, usually does the trick.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
An order of the Russian Government has this week lifted last month’s total ban on grain exports, but stopped well short of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s forecast that significant export shipments of Russian grain may be allowed later in the season.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Oleg Deripaska is preparing a series of presentations to institutional investors next week in Boston and New York, chaperoned by one of his largest creditor banks, BNP Paribas. Rarely has so unconvincing a lamb been led to market by so well-known a wolf; or such an odd couple asked to be believed for the sincerity of their hand-holding.
The prospectus released by United Company Rusal to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on December 31 reveals that BNP Paribas’s affiliated banks are owed more than $415 million by Rusal; no other international bank appears to be owed a larger sum by Rusal than that.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Russia’s Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who also chairs the supervisory board of state diamond miner Alrosa, is considering selling rough diamonds from the state stockpile more than a year earlier than has been forecast by the stockpile agency, Gokhran. It is unclear whether Kudrin is trying to lower the price of the rough to be included in a sale of part of the stock Gokhran bought in 2009 from Alrosa for about $1.2 billion, or stampede the stockpile managers into doing what they have so far refused to do. Moscow sources agree that Kudrin is trying to secure the diamond disposals from Gokhran because Alrosa is running out of mine supplies to meet its buyer contract obligations, especially to the Indians.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
In the last three months of 2009, according to the federal Ministry of Finance in Moscow, Russia exported about 250,000 carats of rough diamonds, produced by Alrosa, to the west African republic of Guinea. There is no known diamond cutting or polishing facility in Guinea, and Russia has never exported diamonds to Guinea before. However, illicit sales of diamonds (aka blood diamonds, conflict diamonds) have been reported as using Guinea as a transit point between the mines in Africa and the markets in Israel, Europe, the US, or elsewhere.
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Senator Bob Brown (left image) is the first Australian politician to call for official accountability in the secret dealings the Australian Government has had since 2004 with Oleg Deripaska. He is chief executive and controlling shareholder of United Company Rusal, the Russian aluminiun monopoly registered on the island of Jersey.
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