By John Helmer, Moscow Magic is a type of confidence trickery, but not all confidence tricksters are magicians. The difference is whether, when the magician pulls, the hat has got a real rabbit in it. Minerals under the ground have something in common with rabbits; that’s to say, sometimes they are there – sometimes there’s […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Novolipetsk Metallurgical Combine (NLMK) and its owner Vladimir Lisin have won a suppression order against Nikolai Maximov, former owner of the Maxi group of minimills and scrap processors, from the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg. A three-judge panel has imposed a permanent injunction against publication in the press of claims by […]

by John Helmer - Monday, May 21st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow White Tiger Gold (WTG) was supposed to be the curtain-raiser on the Canadian stock market for Mikhail Prokhorov and Maxim Finsky, his childhood playmate, to sell shares in their collection of little known gold and other mineral prospects and mining licences in Russia. That collection is called Intergeo, and it cost […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, May 17th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow By all accounts, particularly his own, Alexander Lebedev, aged 52, has been one of those clever KGB agents whose training inculcated the Protestant work ethic, and whose tour of duty in London the wits, to enable him to make a fortune without stealing from anyone; without bribery or administrative resources; without […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, May 10th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow To those who listen, it has been made clear that President-elect Vladimir Putin and his closest policy advisor, Igor Sechin, believe that what they need to know about the oligarchs’ misconduct and mismanagement of Russia’s resource concessions, they don’t need to ask the Federal Security Service (FSB) or the Foreign Intelligence […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, April 8th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Why would Roman Abramovich and his pals decide to buy a small steelmaker in South Africa at a price that would add to their debt by the very same amount they offloaded last year on to share buyers, so as to keep their debt-to-earnings ratio down, and their bankers sweet? That’s […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska’s courtroom defence against the multi-billion dollar claim by his former patron and business partner, Mikhail Chernoy (Michael Cherney) collapsed into lawyer malfeasance and retraction of charges in federal US district court in New York last week. A leak to the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, published on March 26, […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Barry Cheung (second left), the new board chairman of United Company Rusal and the first non-Russian chairman of a Russian monopoly, is viewed by his countrymen and business peers as a technocrat, a politician, and a businessman, in that order. The one business he reports in the curriculum vitae released by […]

by John Helmer - Monday, March 19th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska (image top right) has always had trouble with his business partners when money rewards, administrative pressure, threats, or rigged courts failed to be persuasive. So he might have been more cautious announcing yesterday that the replacement of Victor Vekselberg as chairman of the board of United Company Rusal will […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 14th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Victor Vekselberg, chairman of the board of directors of United Company Rusal, has done what no Russian business partner of Oleg Deripaska has dared to do before, with one exception – announced publicly, and to Deripaska’s face, that Deripaska has violated his signed agreements and brought discredit on his business. Vekselberg, […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, March 13th, 2012
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