By John Helmer, Moscow

Does the Russian vodka lobby fear or hate beer so much, it’s thought up a devious customs regulation to make the latter more expensive, and thus less drinkable among penniless Russians? And are the vodka schemers so devious, they have hidden their intention by introducing the customs regulation in the guise of standardizing (harmonizing is the bureaucrats’ term) the different customs rules of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, which together comprise a single customs union these days?
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by John Helmer - Friday, March 2nd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

It isn’t known whether Alexei Mordashov is religious enough to have studied the Proverbs section of the Old Testament. But as a guide to mining in Africa, he ought to have read this one: “Whoever digs a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolls a stone, it will return on him.”

The reason this might have occurred to Mordashov and his Severstal mining division is that the pit he dug for himself in the Republic of Guinea at the LEFA goldmining concession, he is now about to fall into at the Putu iron-ore project in Liberia.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, March 1st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

There once was a young man called Marko Papic (centre), living in Austin, Texas. Each morning he went to work at a desk paid for by an older man named George Friedman (right), the owner of a company called Stratfor. That was a money-for-secrets scheme hatched by Friedman and his friends (left) in the US Government.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 28th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

When the archaeologists of the next millennium excavate, they will find the evidence of a tectonic shift and turning-point in Russian history that took place in the two months between December 28 and February 25. That’s from the day Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed government order number VP-P13-9308, and instructed Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to supervise compliance; to the day when Alexei Navalny listed the most powerful oligarchs in the country (Switzerland too) as the target of the political opposition — after Putin wins the presidential election.

Navalny’s speech at last Saturday’s St. Petersburg rally marks the first time the oligarch system, and the oligarchs as individuals rather than Putin, have been made the public focus of the opposition movements. Navalny himself named the lines of business to identify the individuals, though he didn’t name names.
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by John Helmer - Monday, February 27th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Eating sheep’s balls is an acquired taste, though if you’re from the Caucasus or Azerbaijan, the taste comes with your mother’s milk, so to speak. If you are an Australian politician, complaining in public that someone else is biting yours is an everyday thing.

Australia has always been sensitive below its belt, where the colonial and imperial powers – Great Britain, the United States, Japan (briefly), and China for the next millennium – like to keep a tight grip. The former prime minister, Kevin Rudd, has a hands-on relationship with China, too – his brother Greg operates a fortune cookie business in Beijing. That hasn’t inhibited Kevin from promising Washington he is ready to go to war with China if the US Government thinks that’s a good thing.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

I know, I know. It’s old fashioned to regard the celebration of February 23 as Red Army Day. And for all the awards heaped on my head for defending the Fatherland from its enemies, foreign and domestic, on this anniversary I plead paucity of means, and defer to those who have recently written to the Prime Minister promising to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to invest in the Fatherland’s furthest reaches – the Arctic seabed, no less. Even when they are so severely wounded financially that they lack the money to honour their promises, I honour their intentions.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, February 23rd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

It has been obvious for some time that Vladimir Kekhman’s banana financials were so rotten, his Joint Fruit Company (JFC) was republishing its second-quarter financial results as if they were the third quarter figures, postponing the fourth quarter and full-year releases, and refusing response to the question Why?

It has also been obvious that Kekhman has been trying not to pay a mounting bill from the UK High Court in London. There since last August, Star Reefers, the owner of the three freighters JFC chartered to carry banana cargoes from JFC’s Ecuadorian plantations to St. Petersburg, has won a compensation award of $16.3 million; additional costs and penalties; and judicial orders against Kekhman personally, along with his appointees at JFC, to disclose where they have put their money, and to freeze JFC transactions with funds the court has required to be paid to Star. Other litigation to seize JFC’s containers in the US, as well as threaten seizure of its banana boxes as they move on Maersk freighters, is also pursuing the fleet-footed Kekhman.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In the memoirs of the great courtesans, much fondness is expressed toward the size of their patrons’ pockets, but never the size (or lack of it) of their male members. Morgan Stanley lacks that kind of discretion.

If you read the report issued on February 17 by the investment bank’s Moscow and London branches on Alexei Mordashov’s Nord Gold, the place to start is below the waist, as it were. “In the next 3 months,” runs the small print of the required US regulatory disclosures, “Morgan Stanley expects to receive or intends to seek compensation for investment banking services from…Nordgold…Within the last 12 months, Morgan Stanley has provided or is providing investment banking services to, or has an investment banking client relationship with …Nordgold…Within the last 12 months, Morgan Stanley has either provided or is providing non-investment banking, securities-related services to and/or in the past has entered into an agreement to provide services or has a client relationship with… Nordgold.”
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by John Helmer - Monday, February 20th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Russia’s government-owned fleet operator Sovcomflot, run by Sergei Frank, has announced that international commodity trader Glencore will take over, market and operate five of its newest oil tankers as they come out of the shipyard and put to sea.

The history of Glencore in Russia since 1991 is a simple one – only financially desperate enterprises agree to Glencore’s terms, when there is no cash to trade with, and no alternative for marketing. For example, in 2008 and 2009 Glencore had baled out Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal when it was on the brink of insolvency at negative $17 billion. When Russneft’s time came in 2010, the Kremlin preferred to make its deal to save the company with the original owner, Mikhail Gutseriyev, rather than leave Russneft in Glencore’s and Deripaska’s hands. More recently, after the lifting of the grain export embargo last July, the state-owned United Grain Company has intimated that it plans to attack Glencore’s dominant market share of the Russian grain export market.
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by John Helmer - Sunday, February 19th, 2012
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