By John Helmer, Moscow United Company Rusal has triggered three recent pollution crises in Ukraine, Russia and Guinea, and in the latest one, frozen red dust from alumina refining operations at the Ukrainian city of Nikolaev coated a five square kilometre area last week, making it look to residents like a Martian landscape.

by John Helmer - Friday, March 4th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Mother Hubbard, one of the most popular old English nursery rhymes, was a hard-luck case. Her kindliness and generosity were ruthlessly exploited by her conniving dog, who played dead for sympathy and then took her for everything she was worth.

by John Helmer - Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Suppose, just suppose that Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of Russia (image far left), and Igor Sechin, the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of resource concessions (image far right), were stakeholders somehow of United Company Rusal, the state aluminium champion. And suppose, just suppose they decided that the hostile takeover strategy of […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 18th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow When a man of quality like Robin Lane Fox finds beauty in a row of cabbages, it’s churlish to do anything but admire his acuity and taste. And if the cabbages are in the kitchen garden of Jacob Rothschild, the 4th Baron Rothschild (left) and father of Nathaniel Rothschild (right), let […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, December 29th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska is running out of friends who stick up for him, especially at the Finance Ministry in Moscow and the Federal Tax Service. Deripaska doesn’t deny that the practice of tolling, through which his United Company Rusal has saved at least $5 billion in tax payments to the Russian treasury […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, December 28th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska has told the Chinese to carry his water while he waits for the British to decide what he owes to the individual who, once upon a time, trusted him more than anyone else has done ever since.

by John Helmer - Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Deep inside the Russian government there is a chamber of secrets where officials have gathered just eight times since April 29, 2008, the day when then-President Vladimir Putin signed the law that created the chamber. The law was entitled “On Procedures for Foreign Investments in Business Entities of Strategic Importance for […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, November 24th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow There are only so many ways a Russian company can make its performance look better to the markets without resorting to magic tricks.

by John Helmer - Friday, November 12th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow If you’re wandering in the desert, and there isn’t enough water to go around, you need to be able to tell your friends at the well from your foes. The ancient Hebrew tribes found that circumcising their members was a particularly reliable device. They didn’t have to punch the Identification Friend […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, November 7th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow A year ago in Moscow, the Queensland state premier, an Australian Labor Party (ALP) politician named Anna Bligh, was threatened that if she didn’t give Oleg Deripaska what his United Company Rusal wanted from the state, he would punish the state treasury with the withdrawal of millions of dollars in […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, October 24th, 2010
No Comments »