By John Helmer, Moscow When Nathaniel Rothschild sued for libel in the UK High Court in 2011, he was claiming that a report in the Daily Mail, published by Associated Newspapers on May 22, 2010, had libelled him for reporting that he had taken Peter Mandelson on a private jet-plane trip to Moscow to eat […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, March 21st, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow The share price of United Company Rusal, the Russian aluminium monopoly, has dropped into the three Hong Kong-dollar range for the first time. In three years of its stock market history, the company’s chief executive, Oleg Deripaska, has let slip about $13 billion in value, two-thirds of Rusal’s original worth. At […]

by John Helmer - Monday, March 18th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska’s airplane touched down in Cyprus on February 28. He wasn’t on holiday; that came a fortnight later, when he, his plane and his boat had a reunion at Male, in the Maldives. Deripaska left Cyprus on March 2. It isn’t known what was in the luggage offloaded on arrival, […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, March 17th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow For the second time in its short history, United Company Rusal, the loss-making aluminium monopoly run by Oleg Deripaska, has been ordered out of an international court with the ruling that it has acted unlawfully to seize confidential data of its critics. On March 1, by order of the District Court […]

by John Helmer - Saturday, March 9th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Severstal, the Russian steelmaker owned by Alexei Mordashov (image, far left, far right) reported today that in the final quarter of 2012 the company suffered a loss of $150 million after revenues fell to $3.12 billion, down 13.2% from the third quarter; earnings (Ebitda) contracted 36.4% to $347 million; and operating […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 6th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Rusal has lost another round in its international litigation against Andrei Raikov, the former head of bauxite and alumina supplies for Rusal’s smelters, as a New York judge ordered last week more disclosures of secret Rusal bank payments by the Bank of New York. Raikov, a 20-year friend of Oleg Deripaska, […]

by John Helmer - Monday, February 25th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Yury Borisovich Rogov was such a long, close and faithful friend of Oleg Deripaska’s that he was invited to stand on Deripaska’s right at his wedding in 2001. To the left of Deripaska’s wife, Polina Yumasheva, are her parents, Valentin Yumashev and Tatiana Dyachenko — the former aide to ex-President Boris […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 19th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last week took a tour of Africa – Algeria, Mozambique, South Africa, and Guinea — in part because President Vladimir Putin told him to, ahead of Putin’s own visit to Africa in March. In part, Lavrov went to the Republic of Guinea at the bidding of […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, February 17th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow In a hearing in federal US District Court in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Rusal, the Russian aluminium monopoly, was challenged by Judge Carla Woehrle to substantiate its court claims in London and elsewhere against the Nigerian government and a Nigerian-American company, BFI Group (BFIG). Through its US attorney, Jamie Bartlett, Rusal […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 13th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Long after the great siege generals – Alexander, Napoleon – enunciated the principle of concentrating fire against the weakest points of an enemy’s walls – the Red Army devised the application combining the most explosives for the cheapest outlay in a saturation pattern which didn’t need to be accurate. It was […]

by John Helmer - Monday, February 11th, 2013
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