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By John Helmer in Moscow A public relations blitz under way in London and the UK media has produced charges and counter-charges involving Alisher Usmanov, an iron-ore and steel magnate, who was named in US court papers as one of the principal defendants in the affair of the Grib pipe, a major diamond deposit in […]

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By John Helmer in Moscow Gold Fields’ sale of its Venezuelan gold assets to Rusoro is a profitable relief There is a traditional Russian toast that can be roughly translated: “May we have more pies and doughnuts, fewer black eyes and bruises!” After selling its loss-making Venezuelan gold assets at a profit to Rusoro Mining […]

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By John Helmer in Moscow Controversy deepens in Moscow over a controversial gold licence extension for Highland Gold, and licence trouble starts brewing elsewhere Somebody in Moscow seems to think that Barrick Gold, the world’s largest gold miner, is in horticultural terms ‘a weed’. In one of Jim Thompson’s thrillers, the killer is told by […]

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By John Helmer in Moscow The Russian government has become the first in the world to tell billionaire industrialist Lakshmi Mittal to take his cash and his steel mills elsewhere. India’s and England’s richest individual, and the world’s largest steelmaker, Lakshmi Mittal has been suffering from a defect of hearing, apparently not understanding the message, […]

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By John Helmer in Moscow In Tajikistan, the nexus between water, electricity, and aluminium turns out to be a dark secret — and a presidential treasure It’s difficult to run a country in the dark. Politicians who leave voters in the cold, unable to cook or keep warm, become unpopular with the flick of a […]

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By John Helmer Sterlite Gold reveals $140 million payday from Russian-funded Georgian gold miner. It has been a mixed week for Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili On September 26 he took to the podium of the UN General Assembly in New York to accuse Russia of interfering in his country’s internal affairs, and acting in “reckless […]