By John Helmer in Moscow
Russia’s anti-trust buster, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), has established a record of making much ado about little; and of regulating only those corners of the Russian market where no oligarch-sized interest is threatened – unless the threat is pre-authorized by the Kremlin’s running orders. But this week the agency announced there is one Russian trust it feels on safe ground challenging — Russia’s wine importers.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Tax-free exports of crude oil from Kozmino, on the Sea of Japan — Russia’s newest oil tanker loading terminal — may be eliminated by April, after a showdown last Friday between the oil industry tsar, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, and the budget tsar, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. For the moment, Kudrin’s pocket derringer is given no chance of prevailing against Sechin’s six-shooter.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Alexei Mordashov (left figure) has a special thing for the Italians. He’s been rewarded for it in a number of ways.
| Last July, he was awarded the Order of Merit from the Italian Ambasador to Russia. The order, according to a Severstal release, is the highest award in Italy. It had been presented to the chief executive and controlling shareholder of Severstal, “for considerable services to the [Italian] nation in the fields of literature, arts, and economics, as well as for social, philanthropic and humanitarian activities.” Owning steelmills in Italy can require the philanthropic and humanitarian impulse, not to mention literary and artistic panache. |  |
Cutting-edge recognition machines – supplied by the Russian state corporation, Nanotechnologies, courtesy of chief executive Anatoly Chubais – report that one of the largest groups of readers of this site uses the Rusal company server to gain access and read the reports. If to these are counted Rusal’s civil litigation lawyer Bryan Cave and Rusal’s London libel lawfirm Schillings – the number of people charging Oleg Deripaska and his corporation for reading the materials is currently running into several hundreds each week, and costing many thousands of dollars and pounds per chargeable hour. The Dancing Bear welcomes this display of interest, and congratulates Rusal on its newfound capacity to pay its bills. Evasion of the toll is no laughing matter. Please note that an actor has been employed in this surveillance clip, and the number-plate has been masked, to protect the real driver and car-owner. The real number is y115AM (190).
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Tatiana Borisovna Yumasheva (aka Dyachenko) has been the politically active of the late President Boris Yeltsin’s two daughters. After shunning publication for years, preserving her privacy, her residence abroad, and her domestic political interests, Yumasheva began publishing a blog on December 3. New essays or comments appear every one or two days – altogether, 38 to date. Over the course of these despatches, Yumasheva explains her publishing intentions at length, but without precision. This has led to speculation that she is launching a public political career for herself. Since she talks about whether Russia is ready to vote for a woman as president, her target may be her father’s old post. For the time being, though, Yumasheva’s basic theme is to present herself as the political heir to Yeltsin’s reputation and votes. Critics of the two of them claim they are electoral liabilities now. But the Levada polling organization says it has never measured public opinion towards Yumasheva; the blog may be the first step towards building a poll rating. If not that, there is the possibility that Yumasheva is bringing Yeltsin back from the dead as the stalking-horse for someone very much alive. Who that might be isn’t clear, yet. But it isn’t likely to be President Dmitry Medvedev, and it is certainly not Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. For they are not only alive; they are making their pact with the Russian electorate without needing Yeltsin at all. Here are some excerpts from Yumasheva.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
The spokesman for Alrosa, the state-owned Russian diamond miner, Andrei Polyakov, has made a statement this week to reporters that Alrosa is considering spinning off three of its diamond mining units, and selling a minority shareholding in each at an initial public offering (IPO). According to a news agency, Polyakov said: “It’s easier to sell shares of separate mining units as ZAO Alrosa itself has some legal constraints. It currently has a legal form of closed joint stock company, which is not suitable for share sale.” The Moscow business daily Vedomosti has reported Polyakov as saying Alrosa “can place at stock exchanges the shares of the subsidiaries Alrosa-Nyurba, Alrosa- Africa, and Severalmaz.” No choice of stock exchange or volume of shares to be sold has been made, the newspaper reported.
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Two thousand years ago, in the northern reaches of what is today called Scotland, the Picts frightened the Romans by a combination of superior fighting tactics, lurid body painting, and the size of their genitals. Defeat the Romans they did, as this medieval illustration shows. They also forced the Emperor Hadrian into building, further south, his famously expensive Wall to keep the Picts from getting in, and taking Roman cattle out.
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By John Helmer in Moscow
Mikhail Prokhorov has been honoured, he has announced, by the apology of the French government.
The Sunday Times of London reported this month that “three years after his arrest in the ski resort of Courchevel on charges of pimping [January 9, 2007], Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia’s richest man, has received an apology from the French authorities for embroiling him in one of the most ill-judged sex scandals of recent times….He was held in a Lyons jail for four days on charges of soliciting for prostitution. Furious at the ‘ludicrous accusations which damaged my reputation’ he launched a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against the French state and demanded an apology. It finally came last month during a meeting between French and Russian officials, presided over by prime ministers Vladimir Putin and Francois Fillon. Prokhorov said: ‘That puts an end to this affair. I said from day one that this case was groundless and am now satisfied with the explanations given to me’.”
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