By John Helmer in Moscow

On June 16, 1858, in Springfield, Illinois, the young Abraham Lincoln launched his campaign for a seat in the US Senate for Illinois, with a speech that became famous for these words: “In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” Lincoln was defeated in the election by the incumbent, Stephen Douglas.

According to anonymous government sources reported by the Wall Street Journal, in August and again in early October of this year, the Obama Administration has decided to allow Oleg Deripaska, the controlling shareholder of United Company Rusal and Russia’s most indebted man, to enter the US, without an approved visa and without public disclosure – at least until now. The US State Department appears from the newspaper report either to have been unaware of, or to have opposed, Deripaska’s entry, which has been barred twice; most recently since 2006. The following US organs reportedly favoured giving Deripaska what the newspaper calls a “limited-entry permit” – the FBI, the US Department of Homeland Security, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and General Motors.
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by John Helmer - Friday, October 30th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Alrosa’s new management, headed by Fyodor Andreyev (right picture), has announced this month that, despite one of the worst years on record for global diamond demand, the Russian company expects to sell roughly the same dollar value of diamonds this year as last, and to earn a bottom-line profit as well.

The announcements of the projected financial results have been posted by dead-drop on wire services or internet sites. Andreyev has yet to answer direct questions from the industry media since he took over the company in July. His spokesman, Andrei Polyakov, does not respond to calls.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, October 29th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

One celebration drink too many in Bar Vogue, in downtown Almaty, has turned out to leave a very bad taste for lawyers advising hard-rock mining and oil project start-ups in Kazakhstan.

In a 216-page judgement issued this month, after three years of litigation across half the globe, a group of Australian lawyers was found guilty of stealing clients from their employer, the Kazakhstan-based law firm of Michael Wilson (see left image) & Partners (MWP). The judge, Clifford Einstein, presiding in the New South Wales Supreme Court, ruled on October 6 that John Emmott, Robert Nicholls, and David Slater had conspired together to exploit their positions in MWP to breach their employment contracts and fiduciary duties to MWP by secretly creating a competing firm of their own, Temujin International, registered in the British Virgin Islands.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, October 29th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

The Far Eastern Shipping Company (Fesco), owned and run by Sergei Generalov, Russia’s largest dry-shipping operator, is to receive a state guarantee for loan repayments of Rb1.5 billion ($52 million), and will apply this to a loan of Rb2.5 billion ($86 million), which is being finalized this month with state bank, VTB.

The decision to award the guarantee was made by a unit of the federal Ministry of Economic Development yesterday, and confirmed by Fesco and Moscow brokers. Separately, Fesco’s railway subsidiary, Transgarant, has received a Rb1.45 billion ($50 million) loan, also from VTB, secured by its railcar fleet. The publicly listed Fesco is the first in Russia’s shipping sector to get a public bailout from the Kremlin.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, October 29th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

A hitherto unknown Russian, believed to have intelligence connexions in Africa, has made contact with the Guinean government in a bid to save the Russian bauxite and alumina concessions in the country. The move, orchestrated in Paris this month, is the first indication to date of French moves afoot to intervene for regime change in the west African republic of Guinea — with methods and motives associated with the infamous murder of Congolese Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, in January 1961. Then, Belgian officials, backed by the CIA and a White House assasination order, did the deed, claiming justification from Soviet support of the popular nationalist figure. This time round, the Russian interests are causing a switch in sentiment.

Victor Alexeyevich Boyarkin (literally translated into English, the name means “belonging to the boyar”) was in Paris a few days ago, according to local sources, where he was introduced to Guinean Government officials as a close associate of Oleg Deripaska (see boyar figure to left), the chief executive and controlling shareholder of United Company Rusal. Boyarkin has an office and secretary at Rusal headquarters in Moscow, and company sources confirm that he heads a department there. During Deripaska’s visit to Paris to meet with French banks a few days ago, Boyarkin was seen with him, and was introduced as one of the company’s top troubleshooters.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

The new Economy and Energy Minister of Bulgaria, Traycho Traykov, has issued a warning to Moscow that if Russia intends to build a new cross-Turkey crude oil pipeline, running from Samsun on the Black Sea, to Ceyhan, on the Aegean, that will mean the cancellation of the long planned Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline, crossing Bulgaria and Greece.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

It was ten years ago, almost to the day, that a lawyer from Philadelphia named Bruce Marks had a very smart idea.

If you are too small and weak, physically or legally, to recover money you unwisely entrusted to a big Russian crook, Marks recommended going to your nearest federal US District Court; and get the judge there to convict the bad guy of something that’s the crime of racketeering in the US, but regular biznes in Russia. And so, civil claims were born out of the US Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). The first trial run by Marks was a 1999 lawsuit in New Jersey by Vyacheslav Bresht against a bunch of US investors, who had bought a rip-off scheme for the Russian titanium producer, Avisma-VSMPO. Rather than go to court and face disclosure of what they had done, they paid up.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Billy Bunter was a fictional schoolboy character well-known to British and colonial schoolboys of my generation. Like most of us, his eyes were bigger than his stomach. Unlike many, by the age of ten Bunter had grasped the concept of leverage — to feed himself he was always borrowing against the legendary postal order that was in the mail from his Pater. To assist in his cons, Billy was also a gifted ventriloquist, making voices appear to come from everywhere but himself. This was always amusing even though — maybe especially because — Bunter was usually caught out, and either caned by his school masters, or kicked by his classmates. (You can have a Russian empire if naughty boys get away with their japes, but not a British one.)
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by John Helmer - Monday, October 26th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

It’s either a comedy starring Pinocchio, or a tragedy ending in Seppuku.

According to Section 1 of Sovcomflot’s corporate code of governance — ratified by the company board in 2007, and posted on the company website — one of the principles is “prompt disclosure of complete and reliable information about the Company enabling informed decision-making by the shareholders and investors of the Company”. Another of the provisions in this section obliges company officeholders to ensure “compliance with ethical standards of business conduct.” By these standards, what is to be made of the public clash in a London courtroom last week over evidence of a relatively paltry sum of one million dollars that hasn’t managed to be identified in Sovcomflot’s accounts yet?
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by John Helmer - Monday, October 26th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

It’s not so surprising that religion tends to be humourless. Making people accept the impossible usually requires threats, not jokes.

There is no record that Jesus Christ ever laughed out loud. His idea of humour was sarcasm, and puns he lifted from fishermen and carpenters. But for overdoing seriousness, the early eastern patriarch, St Cyril of Alexandria (378-444 AD), takes the cake. He’s the fellow who sets the record for heaping more anathemas on a single target than anyone in Christian history.
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by John Helmer - Friday, October 23rd, 2009
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