By John Helmer, Moscow That Boris Berezovsky (image upper right) is a self-delusional liar is no news, particularly not in Moscow. That Justice Dame Elizabeth Gloster (image lower right) should have made this point the crux of her August 31 judgement, dismissing Berezovsky’s claims against Roman Abramovich (lower left), should come as a surprise only […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, September 2nd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Victor Vekselberg won a major UK High Court action on Friday, and the presiding judge, Justice Guy Newey, has ordered that he should get his money’s worth returned. No ruling of fraud was allowed. The amount may turn out to be less than Vekselberg has spent on lawyers and experts over […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, July 29th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Fifteen years ago, the American Journal of Psychiatry reported research that not all obsessive-compulsive disorders are alike. Two individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder, the scientific evidence showed, may have totally different and non-overlapping symptom patterns. For example, the obsession with counting, hoarding, arranging and collecting doesn’t usually accompany the compulsion for hand-washing, […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 10th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska’s sole defence against having to pay Mikhail Chernoy (Michael Cherney) the dividends, assets, interest, and the corpus of his patron’s stake in United Company Rusal is that Cherney extorted the money by presenting him with a trust agreement and contract, and threatening to break his bones if he didn’t […]

by John Helmer - Monday, July 9th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow When a powerful Kremlin official recently confided that he values the usefulness of UK High Court proceedings involving some of Russia’s wealthiest businessmen, he probably wasn’t thinking of the case which concluded on Friday with a judgement issued by Justice Sir Geoffrey Vos. The Russian official was intimating that the British […]

by John Helmer - Monday, July 2nd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow What an enterprising lad! While Highland Gold, a London-listed public stockholding company, was looking in a forward direction, last Friday Roman Abramovich sold it a gold and silver prospect called Klen for the greater part of which he had paid $103,774 eighteen months earlier. Abramovich has now relieved Highland Gold of […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 5th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Every competent gardener knows that horse shit makes valuable fertilizer, so long as you give it at least two months of airing and composting to get rid of the acidity which kills plant roots, and the seeds which grow weeds where you don’t want them. Chicken shit is more balanced, biochemically […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, May 1st, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow If you believe what RusPetro Plc says, this loss-making venture on a small oil patch in Khantiy-Mansiysk — a patch no major Russian oil company has wanted to bother with — is already worth a billion dollars, and is bound to be worth multiples of that. The reason, also according to […]

by John Helmer - Saturday, April 28th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Vladimir Kekhman, the controlling shareholder of Joint Fruit Company (JFC), Russia’s biggest banana trader, has received a summons to appear in the UK High Court to face charges of contempt of court. If he is found culpable, he may be jailed. If he doesn’t appear and is convicted, he may be […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, March 15th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Depending on whose opinion you trust, there’s not a great deal of difference between the business of Rod Christie-Miller (image) and the business of Anton Malevsky. It’s the business of conveying fear to motivate action – or inaction. A parachute jump put an end to Malevsky’s line of work. The UK […]

by John Helmer - Monday, February 13th, 2012
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