By John Helmer, Moscow The UK High Court action by the Schillings law firm, acting for Nathaniel Rothschild in a libel claim against the Daily Mail and Associated Newspapers, was dismissed today by Justice Sir Michael Tugendhat. The ruling also undermines libel threats by Schillings acting for Deripaska against newspapers in South Africa, Hong Kong, […]

by John Helmer - Friday, February 10th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow In Abakan at this time of year the sun doesn’t rise until 10 in the morning, and by 5 it’s too dark to see much. It’s always been this way in the days which follow Kreshenskiy Moroz (the Feast of the Epiphany, old calendar). This week in the capital of the […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow “Russia’s federal security service, the successor to the KGB, has launched a cold-war style attack on non-governmental organisations and human rights groups, linking them with alleged espionage by British diplomats in Moscow.The accusations against the British diplomats come within weeks of Russia assuming the presidency of G8 from Britain and just […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, January 19th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow After claims a week ago that the Daily Mail newspaper and its publisher were expecting to go to trial next month on a libel claim by Nathaniel Rothschild relating to the Russian aluminium business, it has now been revealed that Rothschild has exposed an even more secret business deal he was […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, December 21st, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow Nathaniel Rothschild (right, pointing) has told the UK High Court that a London newspaper report claiming he had tried ingratiating himself with Oleg Deripaska (centre) was defamatory, and that as a result of the publication he had been “seriously damaged in his character and reputation and has suffered considerable distress, embarrassment […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, December 18th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow Investbank, the Russian banking group which was formerly the property of Vladimir Antonov, was asked to clarify its position in relation to the charges now pending against Antonov in Lithuania; the extradition case under way in London; and balance-sheet examinations of banks associated with Antonov in Lithuania, Latvia, and elsewhere. Here […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow While Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich and Oleg Deripaska are hard at work changing the British courts’ interpretation of the law on corruption, Vladimir Antonov has come along to challenge the British law on asylum and extradition. Antonov, along with his Lithuanian partner Raimondas Baranauskas, were arrested in London on November 23, […]

by John Helmer - Monday, December 12th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow The relationship between taste and power is what Karl Marx would have called dialectical; for today’s Russian oligarchs that’s a red flag – in the race track, not the Marxist sense of the term. The oligarchs don’t mind showing off their taste in foreign places and foreign newspapers; inside Russia they […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska demanded, and received from Roman Abramovich, a warranty that in his takeover of Rusal shares, he wasn’t buying stolen goods. Testimony by Deripaska’s London lawyer, Paul Hauser, followed in the UK High Court last week with details which Deripaska himself claimed in his testimony he couldn’t remember at all. […]

by John Helmer - Monday, November 28th, 2011
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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 […]

by John Helmer - Monday, November 21st, 2011
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