A Moscow court has found Sergei Mavrodi, founder of a multi-million-dollar investment scheme, involving at least 2 million people in the 1990s, guilty of massive fraud.
Popularity: 2% [?]
April 24, 2007A deputy Russian foreign minister has blamed the failure of the sixth round of talks on the North Korean nuclear problem on the U.S. position.
Popularity: 2% [?]
March 23, 2007A Moscow court ordered Mikhail Khodorkovsky transferred from a Siberian prison to a detention facility in the Russian capital amid a new investigation into theft and money laundering charges against the former oil tycoon, The Associated Press news agency reported on Tuesday quoting Khodorkovsky’s lawyer.
Popularity: 2% [?]
March 21, 2007A court in California has sentenced two Soviet emigrants to death for kidnapping and brutally murdering five people, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported on Tuesday.
Popularity: 3% [?]
March 14, 2007A Russian diplomat who once chaired a UN budget committee was found guilty in U.S. of helping launder hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and taking a share of the money, the Reuters news agency reports.
Popularity: 2% [?]
March 9, 2007Almost 70% of Moscow’s casinos and slot machine parlors had been closed recently Moscow deputy mayor Iosif Ordzhonikidze said at a press conference on Thursday, the Interfax news agency reports.
However, the official noted that tax revenues of the Moscow budget from gambling have declined by just 3 percent. Over 2,000 from total 2,720 gambling houses have been closed, so tax revenues were supposed to decline substantially Iosif Ordzhonikidze said.
According to the independent research the owner of just one slot machine makes an average profit of $10,000 per month. Gambling business tax returns have struck a seven billion ruble mark, roughly 260 million U.S. Dollars.
Popularity: 2% [?]
November 3, 2006According to a report by an independent Russian think tank INDEM, corruption is still rampant in Russia forcing businessmen to part with 7 percent of theirturnover which they spend on bribes.
The Head of the IDEM foundation Georgy Satarov has presented the anti-corruption report “Business and Corruption. Problems of Countering 2006†on Monday Kommersant daily reports.
The research including interviewing of Russian businessmen was carried out in three Russian cities Moscow, Volgograd and Smolensk.It was discovered that Russian businessman gives bribes twice a year on the average.
IDEM analysts say corruption in Russia is rapidly increasing for the period from 2002 to 2005 it went up 900 percent. As the experts of the foundation reports only 1 out of 100,000 corrupt goes to prison, so chances to fine oneself behind the bards for a bribe taker is 0.0013 percent in Russia.
Popularity: 1% [?]
November 1, 2006Russian businessman placed on the list of individuals allegedly involved in delivering weapons to Congo has denied his involvement after President George W. Bush said earlier this week he had ordered that assets be frozen of dissident general Laurent Nkunda and six other individuals, including Viktor Bout.
Russian entrepreneur Viktor Bout denied his involvement in deliveries of weapons to the Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday. “I have absolutely nothing to do with any shipments of weapons to Congo,†Bout told Russia’s Ekho Moskvy radio.
Previously, Viktor Bout had been accused of illegally selling weapons to a number of countries, including African nations.
On Tuesday President George W. Bush on Tuesday ordered that assets be frozen of dissident general Laurent Nkunda and six others considered by the White House to be destabilizing forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Reuters reported. Bush issued an executive order immediately blocking any assets under U.S. jurisdiction of seven individuals accused of impeding disarmament activities, violating international laws on the targeting of children, or violating the U.N. arms embargo.
The move came two days after a presidential election in the central African country, which is home to the United Nations’ largest peacekeeping force. The vote, praised by foreign observers as largely peaceful and transparent, was meant to bring an end to decades of conflict and pillage that have left the mineral-rich country destitute.
Nkunda, a Tutsi accused of war crimes allegedly committed in 2004, leads a rebellion from Congo’s eastern hills and is reinventing himself as a protector of all Congolese excluded by the central government. Also targeted by the executive order was Hutu rebel leader Ignace Murwanashyaka, president of Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR). The FDLR is accused of taking part in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
The U.N. last year extended the arms embargo on Congo and introduced a travel ban and assets freeze on those violating the embargo.
Others named in the executive order were: Khawa Panga Mandro, former president of the Party for Unity and Safeguarding of the Integrity of Congo (PUSIC); Viktor Anatolijevitch Bout, owner of the Great Lakes Business Company and Business Air Services; Sanjivan Singh Ruprah, a businessman; Dimitri Igorevich Popov, general manager of the Great Lakes Business Company; and Douglas Mpano, manager of the Great Lakes Business Company.
Popularity: 1% [?]
The daughter of ousted President Askar Akaev has denied as “rehashed fantasies†a recent U.S. media report that suggests Kyrgyzstan’s onetime ruling family oversaw a vast network of illegal assets that included many U.S.-based shell companies.
In remarks to the ferghana.ru information website, Bermet Akaeva questioned the authenticity of the documents the NBC television network used for its report, Radio Free Europe reports.
NBC on October 30 said it had obtained an FBI report saying that an international investigation was under way “targeting as many as 175 entities associated with the Akaev organization.â€
Kyrgyz authorities have not reacted to the NBC report, which the AKIpress news agency carried on October 31.
Kyrgyz prosecutors have been giving contradicting indications as to whether Akaev is under criminal investigation for alleged financial misdeeds.
Akaev ruled Kyrgyzstan from 1990 until March 2005, when street protests forced him to flee to Russia.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Russian police and financial intelligence service have uncovered a criminal community that laundered about $7 billion in 2004 and 2005, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported on Tuesday, quoting a release by the Interior Ministry’s Directorate for Fighting Economic Crime. .
The release said that the community, consisting of top managers of several banks and financial companies illegally converted into cash and transferred abroad over 390 million U.S. Dollars, 66 million Euros and over 200 billion Russian Rubles.
The Vek Bank and the Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Pozitsiya (New Economic Position) banks were mentioned in the release as the core of the illegal financial group.
Most of the funds were transferred abroad on the accounts of dummy organizations, RIA-Novosti quoted the release as saying.
Popularity: 1% [?]
October 18, 2006
Russian Spy - covering the latest news on politics, business, culture and sports in Russia and the World. Also providing news coverage for all former Soviet Union Countries.