by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The English read detective stories for the pleasure of unravelling the crime,  proving that even if there are perfect crimes, in the majority of cases the perpetrators don’t get away with them because the detectives are usually cleverer. That’s fiction. In real life,  Russian crimes are different. In the majority of […]

Filed under: DwB, Oligarchs, Sovcomflot, UK-Russia by Editor - Thursday, January 30th, 2020
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Chief Magistrate of England, Emma Arbuthnot (lead image), ruled on Friday to dismiss an application from the Russian Prosecutor-General for extradition of Ilya Yurov, the control shareholder of National Bank Trust (NBT) before the bank was de-licensed by the Central Bank and transferred to Otkritie Bank at the end of […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Sunday, September 30th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow Between buying his bank from Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2004 and losing it to the Central Bank of Russia at the end of December, 2014, Ilya Yurov, chairman of National Bank (NB) Trust, made a fortune. How much of it he has kept for himself, at the expense of his depositors, shareholders […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Monday, October 12th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with One of the peculiarities of the NATO alliance’s sanctions war against Russian businessmen is that the biggest of Russia’s bank robbers and corporate thieves have not been targeted by the press nor by the US Treasury. Indeed, the more criminal their conduct, and the more money they have stolen from Russia, […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Monday, March 21st, 2022
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with US Government officials are protecting some of the largest Russian fraudsters and bank robbers on condition they invest their ill-gotten gains in US real estate, bank accounts, and businesses paying US tax; and also publicly attack the Putin administration for “victimising” them. The latest of these oligarch-sized accused,  Vadim Belyaev (lead […]

Filed under: DwB, Navalny, Oligarchs by Editor - Sunday, January 24th, 2021
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Vadim Belyaev (lead image)  is not the first Russian bank robber to take Cyprus citizenship on his way to safe haven in New York City, and then find himself facing a billion-dollar recovery lawsuit from his Russian pursuers in New York Supreme Court.  He is, however, the very first to attempt […]

Filed under: Oligarchs, UK-Russia by Editor - Thursday, September 10th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with For catching birds it’s old-fashioned child’s play to put salt on their tails. But fooling the bird in order to get close enough with the salt-shaker, before the bird takes off, is a job for grown-ups.   When it comes to catching fugitive bankers, money launderers and the families of corrupt […]

Filed under: Oligarchs, UK-Russia by Editor - Tuesday, April 14th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with It is now a fortnight since President Vladimir Putin (lead image, left) announced  a tax on Russians exporting their cash and capital to tax avoidance havens abroad;  and since Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin followed to explain that Cyprus is the target. “We have started implementing the instructions on taxing dividends from […]

Filed under: Cyprus, DwB, Skripal by Editor - Wednesday, April 8th, 2020
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By John Helmer, Moscow The case for and against Julian Assange (lead image, 3rd from left) will keep him in the UK for at least eighteen months, probably two years, possibly three, according to leading London lawyers.  The UK will have a new government by then; the US too. In the interval, Assange’s lawyers are […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Sunday, April 14th, 2019
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By John Helmer. Moscow According to the rule of Soviet law, which Russians over the age of 40 believe, most forms of capitalism are a crime, especially investment banking. By the rule of modern Russian politics, if Alexei Kudrin, German Gref, and Andrei Kostin announce a man is innocent, he is bound to be guilty […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Sunday, March 24th, 2019
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