- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow At a time when mass protests against the greed and criminality of bankers have spread from from the US to Greece, Italy and the UK, and on across the world, the London Daily Telegraph headline, “Financiers are being forced out of Russia”, might be widely applauded by a certain section of […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow Ekaterina Videman is the spokesman for Mechel and Mechel Mining, wealth accumulation vehicles controlled by Igor Zyuzin (left). What she and the company announce publicly is what they want public shareholders to think, and they do not respond readily to questions. This is allowable under the New York Stock Exchange rules […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow Global warming should be so good for Russia that, as long as St. Petersburg can be jacked up by a metre or so, it may pay for the Kremlin to accelerate the melting of the Arctic ice-pack, if it can. But will that be so good for the beverages Russians like […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

Q [Laurence Rabinowitz for Boris Berezovsky] Mr Abramovich, in the course of that answer you said when you visited him — talking about Mr Patarkatsishvili — in February [2003], you told him that you were selling [Rusal] because Oleg [Deripaska] was trying to squeeze you out. Is that now your evidence?

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow Is Vladimir Kekhman going to lose his bananas because the Joint Fruit Company (JFC) he owns, Russia’s banana trade leader, cannot, or will not, pay $16.2 million in commercial damages awarded since August by the UK High Court in London? Kekhman, who doubles as director of the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow An unusual moment occurred on Wednesday this week in Roman Abramovich’s testimony in the UK High Court when he refers to the seigneurial right – that historically doubtful power a feudal lord claimed for first sex with young virgins on his estates, who were, by feudal law, his property. Abramovich says: […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow Let’s hear it for Polymetal’s control shareholders – they have devised a scheme that appears to have fooled much of the Moscow market, but few in the London market. By moving Polymetal to the main board of the London Stock Exchange (LSE), they have camouflaged a free floating share bloc which […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow Charlie Drake’s hit song has been celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in London, where it was created and first recorded, not far from the law courts on the Strand. Play it before you read another word, and listen carefully to the lyrics.

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow There are two ironies in Sergei Frank’s latest outing in the London courts on November 4. One is that Frank, chief executive of Sovcomflot, is not lodging an appeal against rulings last December and March by High Court Justice Andrew Smith, judging Frank himself to have been dishonest. Nor is he […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow One of Russia’s richest men, and by some accounts one of the cleverest, claims he has no idea whether the principal source of his income is taxed. The admission came just a few minutes after three in the afternoon in London last Friday. Roman Abramovich may have been tired, having been […]