By John Helmer, Moscow The value difference and profit opportunity between a genuine piece of art and a fake are so large, there’s no deterring entrepreneurial forgers. Until now, the cleverest schemes have, ethnically speaking, been the specialty of Englishmen, Americans, and well-known art auction houses, museum curators and experts in connoisseurship. That last term […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, November 13th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Roman Abramovich was recently able to bamboozle a British judge with no experience of Russia, when the credibility standard was set by Boris Berezovsky. But can his winsome personality persuade President Vladimir Putin and energy chief Igor Sechin that Russia badly needs to acquire an Australian company that has adapted Soviet […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, November 8th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow If Russia’s leading oil trader Gunvor can lose its allocations of crude oil from Rosneft and Surgutneftegas in a flash, and Novatek almost a third of its domestic gas sales in another instant, then Gennady Timchenko, a control shareholder of both companies, has some explaining to do in public. That is, […]

by John Helmer - Friday, November 2nd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow In the century-old story of the little boy and the four tigers, the latter force the lad to give up his clothes with threats to eat him, if he doesn’t come across. Then in a frenzy of envy and greed, the tigers chase each other until they turn to butter. Unscathed, […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow In the good old days, when Rusal, Russia’s aluminium monopoly, was taking in great volumes of cash and Oleg Deripaska, the controlling shareholder, had his associates emptying it for other business as fast as they could, Deripaska operated a fleet of aircraft, large and small. That the biggest of the fleet, […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, October 28th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow When it comes to interior decoration, no one does gilding better than Alisher Usmanov. And when it comes to serving delicacies to journalists, none cooks up the hors d’oeuvres better than he does. In the international stock markets, however, these qualities don’t quite cut the mustard. In consequence, in London this […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Gennady Timchenko is usually so discreet, he engages lawyers to warn reporters away from peering too closely at his private life. So when his friends, all of a sudden and in unison, start telling a Moscow newspaper that he has decided to move back to Russia, Timchenko is either acting out […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, October 21st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow The disclosure of the costs Roman Abramovich incurred in defending against and defeating Boris Berezovsky’s claims — confirmed by an order of Justice Dame Elizabeth Gloster on October 12 — have turned out to be less for Berezovsky to pay than had been speculated in the press. But that’s because he […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, October 16th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow It’s no surprise that when Alisher Usmanov (left) proposed an initial public offering (IPO) of Megafon, a mobile telephone company he controls, he decided to keep all his shares to himself, and to oblige new sharebuyers to bid for stock being sold from the treasury of Megafon, and from minority stockholder, […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 10th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Very occasionally it happens that the lie a man tells, or his lawyer, comes back to haunt him. Here is the judgement in the case of Michael Cherney (Chernoy) v Oleg Deripaska, issued by the UK Court of Appeal on October 3. Not a word of it has appeared yet in […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, October 7th, 2012
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