It’s just as well Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov will appear for his meetings in Washington next week clean-shaven.

A recent history of the human face came to the conclusion that, at least in the earliest systems of human government, men with beards did well, because it was thought they could negotiate better, conceal their real feelings, and get away with telling more believable lies.

But since 1991 there have been few beards on the faces of Russian officials. The goatee that former Central Bank chairman, Sergei Dubinin, used to display never improved the credibility of his claims. The moustache on the face of Finance Minister Mikhail Zadornov hasn’t made him more believable either. It’s a fitting symbol of the half-truths he’s in the habit of uttering. (more…)

by John Helmer - Thursday, March 18th, 1999
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Suppose, just suppose, that the real reason for running $50 billion in Russia’s Central Bank cash reserves through the accounts of a shelf company registered in the Channel Islands, was not to hide the money from foreigners intent on seizing state assets, but rather to hide from Russians trying to steal them.

And suppose, just suppose, that those Russians were high officials of the state.

How awkward indeed it would be for Victor Gerashchenko, current and former chairman of the Central Bank, to write a letter to Michel Camdessus, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to explain what he’d been doing in the Channel Islands. (more…)

by John Helmer - Saturday, February 20th, 1999
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Until the thunder strikes, the Russian saying goes, the peasant won’t cross himself.

Neither cross nor double-cross is what the Russian government claims it did when the Kurdish leader, Abdullah Ocalan, most recently flew from Athens to Russia, then back to Athens, and then towards Minsk, only to be turned back.

According to the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service Vladimir Putin, the question of admitting Ocalan to Russia, or refusing him, was never directly considered by the President nor the Prime Minister of Russia. They, Putin seemed to be saying, have no responsibility for what has happened to Ocalan. (more…)

by John Helmer - Saturday, February 20th, 1999
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What leads fine performers of Bach cello sonatas, Rachmaninov piano concertos, and Chekhov plays and stories to imagine they can enter Russian politics as nimbly as they move their fingers over their instruments and scores?

One answer Rostropovich the cellist, Petrov the pianist, and Mikhalkov the film-maker have given is that they have the right, and also the duty, to their country and to their countrymen, to speak the truth to power. In the revolutionary times we’ve been living through, and in a democracy, it’s not just artists who have this right. Everyone does, there are fewer Who feel and implement this duty, but artists are hardly exceptional.

Just so, when Russian artists speak to power as they do, using their reputation as their platform, they are not necessarily better equipped than anyone else to know the truth of which they speak. Rostropovich probably didn’t mean to demonstrate how little equipped he was, when, not long ago, he pronounced President Yeltsin to be in vigorous good-health. (more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, February 19th, 1999
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For years now, officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), of Russia’s Finance Ministry, and of the Central Bank of Russia have been conducting a discreet conversation among themselves they intended no-one else to hear — at least not in Russia.

Mikhail Zadornov — who complained this was unprincipled and undemocratic when he was a member of parliament — defended the practice, once he joined the conversation. “It’s really not worth being discussed publicly,”Zadornov claimed last week, speaking to the Duma as Minister of Finance. That was a little echo of Victor Gerashchenko, the Central Bank chairman, who made his remark, also to the Duma, the week before.

The topic of the conversation that has embarrased the officials by being disclosed to Russia’s chief taw enforcement officer, its chief auditor, and its parliament, is what the Central Bank has been doing with its reserves. (more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 16th, 1999
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As the well-known Engish screenwriter, Dennis Potter, was in his last days, dying of pancreatic cancer, he agreed to an interview on television.

There he said: “I call my cancer Rupert. I would shoot the bugger if I could.”

Potter was speaking of Rupert Murdoch, the media proprietor. Five years after Potter’s death, in a meeting in Moscow between Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Boris Berezovsky, Primakov took some of Potter’s advice.

In Moscow, Murdoch has his foot stuck in one of the most malodorous of influence-peddling scandals. The outcome of that is likely to be new parliamentary legislation banning foreign shareholding in Russia’s state-owned television networks; and maybe new limits On the airing of American-made films and television entertainment, like those produced by Murdoch’s Twentieth Century Fox division. (more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, February 12th, 1999
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By answering questions the way he’s been doing, the Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia, Viktor Gerashchenko, has unfortunately aroused people to ask whether he’s a good man, or bad.

A good man is good inside, they say in Russian villages — a good horse is good outside.

No one investigating the Central Bank at the moment is able to find out, and no auditor or prosecutor need care, whether Gerashchenko is good on the inside. What concerns us all is whether he’s good on the outside — whether, like the village horse, he is carrying the burdens that are his duty, or not.

In the case of the Central Bank, the legislation that governs its operations was enacted in such a way as to make the Bank accountable on many matters to itself alone. Gerashchenko told a television interviewer last week that he and his bank report to the Duma. He didn’t elaborate on all the topics, records, transactions, and accounts which are not reported to the Duma, or withheld from the Accounting Chamber, according to the interpretation of the law which the Bank holds. (more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 9th, 1999
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What kind of bird is russa’s prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, or is he a fox?

Aesop once tried to explain the difference with the fable of a jackdaw, who was sitting on the branch of a fig-tree. Hungry though he was, the bird could see the fruit was still green. So he decided to wait.

A fox came along, and seeing the jackdaw sitting and waiting, he asked him why. When the jackdaw explained he was waiting for the figs to ripen, the fox replied he was mistaken. “You’re just living off hope. Hope feeds the illusions, not the stomach.”

There are many people in Russian politics, who, believing Primakov is the best alternative among the current flock of candidates to rule Russia, say they are waiting for the figs to ripen. It’s their view that Primakov is obliged to do the same. (more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, February 5th, 1999
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Rogues aren’t always criminals. Take rogue elephants, for example: if they threaten to go on the rampage, it’s neces sary to immobilise them; and if that doesn’t work, to shoot them. After the rampage, that’s a waste of bullets — unless they threaten to come back.

The evidence being patiently assembled at the moment by the Accounting Chamber and the Procurator-General proves that the Central Bank of Russia is totally out of control; operat ing entirely by its own rules; accountable to no-one but itself. It’s not the model independent monetary authority which former Central Bank chairman Sergei Dubinin and his favourites in the press like to claim. It was a rogue elephant during the financial collapse of 1998. It could come back to rampage again.

By concentrating on the suspicion that Dubinin’s bank acted illegally, Russian investigators and public discussion are missing the distinction between the criminal and the rogue. The latter can do — and in Dubinin’s bank did do — just as much damage. Even if he and his subordinates were to be punished, failing to immobilise the Central Bank under Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko allows it to repeat the damage once more. What game warden could be so foolhardy? (more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 2nd, 1999
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Heart surgeons are like athletes. Their best work requires tremendous endurance for feats of physical precision, coordination, and ingenuity. This is why the best surgeons are past their prime by the age of 50. That’s when the strength and control that flows from brain to fingertips begins to ebb.

At more than 80 years of age, Michael DeBakey of Houston, Texas, is long past wielding the scalpel as he once could. His mind isn’t clouded, though, and as a cardiological consultant, he has devised a specialty that’s never been thought of before.

DeBakey is the world’s expert on the heartbeat of foreign politicians whose survival is a national interest of the Clinton Administration. You might say he’s more than a cardiological expert. He’s the human equivalent of the pacemaker — that battery-like gadget which, when implanted in the body, monitors the natural heart muscle, and gives it an electrical charge when it falters a beat or two. (more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, January 22nd, 1999
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