By John Helmer, Moscow
The junior Australian iron-ore miner, Flinders Mines, announced a halt to trading in its shares today amid market speculation that Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine (MMK), the Russian steelmaker owned by Victor Rashnikov (image, right), is preparing a bid to buy part or all of the Flinders Mines shares, adding up to a billion dollars to MMK’s debt.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin recently conceded that the oligarchs who were running Russia behind the shaking hand and raddled brain of Boris Yeltsin had caused such chaos, Putin was obliged to use what he called “manual control” to recover the country. The evidence given last week in the UK High Court trial of Berezovsky v Abramovich reveals what Abramovich got up to outside Russia, when he thought he was safe from Kremlin supervision – holidays, airplane rides, limousine and helicopter trips between seaside villas and ski chalets, lots of them. That is according to Christian Sponring, the Austrian cook who became Abramovich’s major domo, and after fourteen years, still is.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
The share price of OM Holdings (OMH:U), one of the few pure manganese miners in the world to be listed on an international stock exchange, fell 9% the day after the Australian and US governments signed a new military pact, inviting 2,500 US Marines to a base in Darwin, and threatening China with as yet undisclosed new military measures. OMH’s manganese is mined in Australia, and that’s where its share is listed also. But its control shareholders are Chinese, who have employed Singapore-based nominees to run the Australian source of manganese – an alloy to strengthen steel — and protect Chinese steelmills from having the manganese price dictated by the real government in Australia, BHP Billiton, one of the world’s largest manganese producers. BHP’s share price fell 2% on the same day.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Oleg Deripaska has made his debut in the witness-box of the UK High Court, testifying for almost three hours on Friday afternoon, after being called as a witness by Roman Abramovich against the claims of Boris Berezovsky.
So precise and painstaking were Deripaska’s responses to some of the questions asked by the High Court Justice Dame Elizabeth Gloster and Laurence Rabinowitz, counsel for Berezovsky, that the near-total collapse of another of Deripaska’s cognitive functions, his memory, stunned the courtroom in London. At one point, the presiding judge told Rabinowitz that she permitted him to continue a line of questioning to probe Deripaska’s claim for forgetfulness after Rabinowitz said he had done as much as he could.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
At a time when mass protests against the greed and criminality of bankers have spread from from the US to Greece, Italy and the UK, and on across the world, the London Daily Telegraph headline, “Financiers are being forced out of Russia”, might be widely applauded by a certain section of the population. So the Bolshie Russians are doing to them what noone else in the capitalist world dares – that might be the theme for Telegraph columnist Con Coughlin. Except that it isn’t.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Ekaterina Videman is the spokesman for Mechel and Mechel Mining, wealth accumulation vehicles controlled by Igor Zyuzin (left). What she and the company announce publicly is what they want public shareholders to think, and they do not respond readily to questions. This is allowable under the New York Stock Exchange rules for Mechel, because it is a foreign-domiciled listing on the US exchange, and that exempts it from disclosure requirements which apply to the domestic stocks on the same exchange.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
Global warming should be so good for Russia that, as long as St. Petersburg can be jacked up by a metre or so, it may pay for the Kremlin to accelerate the melting of the Arctic ice-pack, if it can. But will that be so good for the beverages Russians like for slaking their thirst? Beer, for instance.
According to the latest announcements from Denmark-based brewer Carlsberg, profits of 3.3 billion Danish krone ($591 million) have fallen by 20% in the third quarter, ending September 30. And because almost half of Carlsberg’s profits are earned from beer sales in Russia, the bad news must be Russian in origin. Carlsberg sells 45 brands of beer in the Russian market, ranging alphabetically from Baltika to Nevskoye, Uralskoye, and my favourite, Zhigulevskoye (as aerated and rusty as my old car).
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Q [Laurence Rabinowitz for Boris Berezovsky]
| Mr Abramovich, in the course of that answer you said when you visited him — talking about Mr Patarkatsishvili — in February [2003], you told him that you were selling [Rusal] because Oleg [Deripaska] was trying to squeeze you out. Is that now your evidence? |
By John Helmer, Moscow
Is Vladimir Kekhman going to lose his bananas because the Joint Fruit Company (JFC) he owns, Russia’s banana trade leader, cannot, or will not, pay $16.2 million in commercial damages awarded since August by the UK High Court in London?
Kekhman, who doubles as director of the Mikhailovsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, was recently named Man of the Year in the Theatre Producer category by Russia’s GQ Magazine. In March, he won the Izvestia Celebrity of the Year award in the Culture category (Good Deed was the other category). The year after next, Kekhman said at the March award ceremony, he plans bicentennial celebrations for Wagner and Verdi. Until then, it’s a case of la forza del destino – though not the one commissioned from Verdi by the old Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in St. Petersburg.
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By John Helmer, Moscow
An unusual moment occurred on Wednesday this week in Roman Abramovich’s testimony in the UK High Court when he refers to the seigneurial right – that historically doubtful power a feudal lord claimed for first sex with young virgins on his estates, who were, by feudal law, his property.
Abramovich says: “Well, it’s the thing which is called the right of the first night”. In the Russian and the English, Abramovich is referring to the Latin jus primae noctis – properly translated, that’s the law of the first night. The feudal law textbooks claim the rape could be bought off if the girl gave the lord part or all of her dowry. Either way, she would become used property and unmarriageable.
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