By John Helmer in Moscow A secret meeting in the middle of the night in the presidential palace in the Guinean capital of Conakry, requested by the Russian aluminium oligarch Oleg Deripaska, has triggered a Guinean court ruling and a tax investigation of claims amounting to $700 million. The claims catapult the Guinean government and […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, September 24th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow Mahmoud Thiam, the US-trained banker turned resource policymaker for the Guinean government (pictured right), says that the nine-month review he has initiated of the country’s major mineral and mining concessions is not intended to reopen or renege on every deal done with foreign miners during the 25-year rule of Lansana […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, September 24th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, was last elected in December 2007. The outcome was the following distribution of seats: United Russia, 315; Communist Party, 57; Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, 40; and Fair Russia, 38. Vadim Varshavsky, 49, was elected to the Duma in 2005 […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow Mikhail Prokhorov is an accomplished athlete, whose sports include skiing, basketball, kickboxing, and waterskiing. He is also an upstanding Russian patriot, dedicated to the introduction of high-technology skills to Russians who have been crippled in their ball-handling skills by seventy years of Marxism-Leninism. In response to the reports appearing here […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow Dying of laughter isn’t the worst way to go. In the ancient world, it befell to the Stoic philosopher Chrysippos to be contemplating one day the relationship between altruism and heroism. Into his viewfinder two donkeys appeared. It isn’t clear whether they started drinking wine from a cup Chrysippos had […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow In the original game of basketball, invented by Dr James Naismith in 1892, there were 13 rules. Rule 5 was the disqualifier. In the playbook of Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, there is just one rule – and that’s the disqualifier. Mikhail Prokhorov’s decision to buy into the American […]

by John Helmer - Friday, September 18th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow Two weeks ago, without fanfare, the US Government decided it will not allow General Motors (GM), in which the government owns the controlling 60% stake, to sell its European automobile division to a Russian combination of the state savings bank Sberbank, Oleg Deripaska’s GAZ auto plant, and Deripaska’s Canadian partner, […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow The Russian wine market has been drying up, though it’s on account of falling incomes, not because of recent exhortations by mental health specialists and President Dmitry Medvedev to curb drinking. “The average statistical man in our country is a drunkard,” according to Alexander Nemtsov, a department head at the […]

by John Helmer - Friday, September 4th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow “Mr Deripaska is a man who denies everything”. This was said in the Court of Appeal in London on July 21, by Geoffrey Vos QC, arguing the case on behalf of Deripaska’s former patron and founding stakeholder, Michael Cherney (Mikhail Chernoy), that Deripaska should face trial in England on Cherney’s […]

by Editor - Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow At 2:30 pm, London time today, Oleg Deripaska lost his appeal of the July 3, 2008, ruling by the High Court Justice Christopher Clarke, ordering him to face trial by the UK High Court on charges of defrauding his patron and business partner, Michael Cherney. Four of the most senior […]

by John Helmer - Friday, July 31st, 2009
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