By John Helmer, Moscow The sanctions programme adopted against Russia to date aims, according to this week’s declaration by US President Barack Obama, at curtailing the capabilities of the Russian government to field men and arms on or across Russian borders; and to penalize individuals and corporations for sustaining the Russian economy while the war […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, July 30th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow The British Court of Appeal has issued a ruling to deny the Sovcomflot group and its Novoship subsidiary the right to appeal a corruption judgement to the Supreme Court, the highest of the British courts. The judgement puts an end to nine years of attempts by Sovcomflot group chief executive Sergei […]

by John Helmer - Friday, July 25th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow If Andrei Goncharenko paid £43 million for an asset worth no more than half as much, he has set something of a Russian record for business acumen. And he might well have kept that acumen secret, if not for a group of squabbling Englishmen wanting commissions for arranging the deal, and […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, July 10th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Easter holidays have come early for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) User-Generated Content Hub (UGC) in London. That’s the BBC’s centre for expertise whose purpose is to make sure that published images, still and moving, soundtracks, and other documentary film material, are authentic, and mean what the Corporation says they […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, April 16th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow Theologians may wrestle to Kingdom Come before they will agree that a gusher of faith can be drilled out of a bedrock of reason. In the case of junior Russian oil companies taking money from investors on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), the gushers are proving to be short-lived. The loss […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, January 22nd, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow New evidence has surfaced from the Russian state shipping company Sovcomflot showing that the current chief executive Sergei Frank ordered the company’s lawyers to continue their attempts to prosecute his predecessor Dmitry Skarga in the London and Moscow courts, while telling the General Prosecutor in Moscow they were dropping their case […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, November 7th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Supreme Court, the UK’s highest court of appeal, has dismissed an application from Sovcomflot, the state-owned Russian shipping group, to appeal against earlier judgements in favour of former chief executive, Dmitry Skarga (right). A three-judge panel issued its ruling on October 29, saying Sovcomflot’s application “does not raise an arguable […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, October 31st, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow A mystery company in London, doing millions of dollars’ worth of mystery business for United Company Rusal, has reappeared after being struck off the UK Companies Register in June for failure to report its annual accounts. Except that now the company auditor says he can’t explain the revenue and cost claims, […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow An attempt by Siberian Anthracite, a little known Russian coal producer, to list and sell its shares on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) collapsed today, just hours after Reuters reported the sale was going ahead. According to the report from the Reuters Moscow Bureau, the initial public offering “has been subscribed […]

by John Helmer - Friday, July 12th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow A spate of advertisements for an initial public offering (IPO) of shares, accompanying several rouble bond issues, makes the Lenta hypermarket chain of St. Petersburg appear to be diversifying its investor base with promises of strong growth and a wager on rising Russian consumer spending. In fact, Lenta’s largest shareholder, the […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 2nd, 2013
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