An interesting coincidence
The permanent court of arbitration in the Hague has ruled that Russia is to pay $50 billion in damages in the Yukos case. The company that gobbled up most of Yukos’ assets is Rosneft but the defendant in the case…
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Winterings in Trans-Scythia
Fragments of a blog
Category business
Twin cities on the Amur
A year or two back I read about Russian pensioners in Blagoveshchensk, the Russian city by the Chinese border on the Amur river, leasing out their apartments and renting flats in Heihe, the city on the opposite, Chinese bank. You…
Go local
The Russian deputy PM Igor Shuvalov has been accused of insider trading, that is profiting from the pending abolition of the two-tier market in Gazprom shares in 2005-6. Now Shuvalov is strongly suggesting that Russian companies delist from Western stock…
Shaxson on London’s “treasure islands” and oligarchs
Nicholas Shaxson says almost everything I feel I’ve wanted to say, and much more, about the London-centered offshore network and its side effects. In the first section of his long, well-structured article, Shaxson surveys responses to Ben Judah’s recent NYT piece,…
Breaking what’s being fixed
The current Putin-Medvedev government wants Russian-owned businesses with a primary focus in Russia to be domiciled in Russia. At the same time, Putin’s latest Constitutional amendment is doing away with the most advanced segment of Russia’s otherwise pathetic legal system,…
If it’s not broken, break it
Putin wants the Russian constitution changed to merge courts of general jurisdiction and arbitration courts. The latter, a separate branch of the judiciary, try commercial disputes between corporations. From what I’ve read in the Russian press, arbitration courts have much improved…
Member of Putin’s party invests profits from Russian slave labor in Florida
“It’s the Prison Industrial Complex à la Russe,” I replied to someone in the comment section of the Guardian, which printed Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s letter from the forced labor camp in Mordovia. Sean has more on this in “Russia’s Prisoners Labor…
Greenpeace “piracy:” chronicles of Russia’s self-destruction
Back to the 30 Greenpeace activists who have been or are going to be charged with piracy in Murmansk. Once again, the reasons why the charge is absurd under international law have been laid out by prof. Kontorovich (scroll down…
Gazprom’s $3-bln platform
Offshore oil production is less than 3% of Russia’s total but Russia has grandiose plans for oil and gas production in the Arctic ocean as well as the Black Sea and the Far Eastern seas. ExxonMobil’s and Shell/s experience operating…
Gazprom’s Arctic platform: how important is it?
Russia produces over 10 million barrels per day – 500+ million tons per year – of crude and condensate, about as much as Saudi Arabia. Which of the two countries is No. 1 in total liquids output depends on how and…
The other cheek to Minsk
The mustached tyrant of Belarus is holding hostage the CEO of the Russian potash exporter, Uralkali. What does Lukashenko want? First, a change in Uralkali ownership; second, a revival of the Russo-Belarusian potash cartel. That’s how it seems, at least.…
Did Andrei Shleifer work for the CIA back then?
Most certainly not. Prof. Shleifer could just pick up his phone and call Lawrence Summers to pass on any important info on Russia. But Putin claimed that Anatoly Chubais, when in charge of privatization in the 1990s, had two CIA officers…