SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1627 (88), Friday, November 19, 2010
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TITLE: Purge Victims to Get Memorial Center
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Kovalevsky forest on the outskirts of St. Petersburg is to become home to Russia’s first memorial center for the victims of the Red Terror.
The forest, located in the Vsevolozhsky district of the Leningrad Oblast, houses the ruins of a former powder depot that served as a temporary compound for political prisoners who had been sentenced to death.
“The prisoners were driven to the woods in vans, put into the building, and then taken out in small groups and shot,” said Irina Flige, head of the historical branch of the St. Petersburg human rights group Memorial. One of the victims of the Bolshevik regime who was killed here was the eminent Silver Age poet Nikolai Gumilyov.
At least 4,500 people were executed in the Kovalevsky forest, according to Memorial. The mass graves were discovered back in 2001 on a plot of land that still officially belongs to the Russian Defense Ministry.
Mass graves have been discovered periodically at various sites in the former Soviet Union since it collapsed in 1991.
In total, political repression could have claimed the lives of as many as 2.7 million local residents during the communist era, out of a nationwide total of 20 million, Memorial says.
The driving force behind the project is the Moscow-based non-governmental umbrella organization Memorial.
The project will be funded by the state, though it is expected that private businesses will contribute to its maintenance. Memorial activists said that interest in the project has already been expressed by entrepreneurs.
The memorial complex will feature a memorial cemetery, a museum and an information and research center. The Russian Orthodox Church plans to build a church at the site, and it is expected that representatives of other confessions will consider opening places of worship there.
During the purges by first the Bolsheviks and later under Stalin, the victims also included foreign nationals.
“Some of these people were persecuted purely on the grounds of their non-Russian nationality, others were killed because they dared to disagree with the ruling regime, believed in ideals other than Communism, or challenged the terror that had engulfed the country,” said Anatoly Razumov, head of the St. Petersburg-based Center for Recovered Names.
“For people to develop immunity against a totalitarian regime, they have to understand it,” Flige said. “This understanding is lacking in the country.”
Despite Russia’s bloody history and the Bolshevik legacy, there is still no museum dedicated to the gulag prison camp system in the country. The nation’s only gulag museum is a remote former prison camp in the Perm region. Several controversial paragraphs in a history textbook are all that the country’s schoolchildren are likely to read about the camps. Russia’s human rights advocates allege that, “Very often in Russia, what is supposed to be a book of remembrance turns out to be a report about KGB achievements.”
Memorial activists say that every reminder about the purges of totalitarian regimes — be it a written, oral or visual story — helps to build up an immunity against totalitarianism and boosts democratic development in Russia.
“Those rushing to hush these memories up quickly are in most cases driven not by the desire to come to terms with the past or create a new political movement, but by an ambition to wash their hands of it completely without devoting much thought to human rights,” Flige said.
Many human rights advocates and historians believe that Russia is less liberal today than it was ninety years ago when the Bolsheviks, fresh from seizing power in the revolution of October 1917, dissolved the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, a democratically elected body that survived until 1918.
Boris Pustyntsev of the human rights group Citizens’ Watch said that the Kremlin is unofficially restoring authoritarian rule in Russia.
“An authoritarian regime with a human face could exist in the 19th century when it could be found in a number of countries,” Pustyntsev said. “But in the current time period, when there are widely recognized international standards in the field of human rights, such a regime is bound to be a pariah.”
Pustyntsev said that growing nationalism and a quest for a national idea show that Russia is on the brink of a spiritual catastrophe.
“The issue of a national idea — or national unification — only surfaces when a country is either at war or during some kind of devastating cataclysm. And, after all, why don’t Russians unite around the humanitarian ideas of respect for human rights? It would only earn them the respect of others, and help them regain their self-respect.”
TITLE: Transneft Accused Of Stealing $4 Billion
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos and Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The leaking of an official report suggesting $4 billion was stolen by Transneft insiders during the construction of a pipeline to the Chinese border was greeted Wednesday with the government offering congratulations to the state-controlled oil pipeline operator for completing the project.
“They stole. They overstated prices. They connived with contractors to cheat. Then they destroyed the documents,” Andrei Navalny, a minority Transneft shareholder and lawyer, wrote on his blog, where he published what he described as a Transneft report requested by the Audit Chamber.
The Kremlin has made no comment about the matter.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he could see “no necessity to comment on the blog.”
“If there had been something going on, we would surely have been informed directly” by the Audit Chamber,” he said, RIA-Novosti reported.
But the government did release a statement Wednesday congratulating Transneft on the completion of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, or ESPO, to the Chinese border.
The government “expressed its thanks” to Transneft “for a big investment in the development of cooperation in the field of energy between Russia and China and the completion of the pipeline from Skovorodino to the Chinese border,” according to the statement carried by RIA-Novosti.
The pipeline was initially proposed by Yukos as an independent project in 2001. Construction of the 4,857-kilometer pipeline started in April 2006.
Audit Chamber chief Sergei Stepashin said his office had to check the authenticity of Navalny’s documents by comparing them with its own probe, conducted in 2008 and 2009, Vedomosti reported.
He said Transneft did misuse some funds for the ESPO pipeline, but the figures were not as large as the $4 billion claimed by Navalny.
“Let’s wait for the Audit Chamber to report on its findings. Without its position, it will be hard to move anywhere,” Public Chamber member Iosif Diskin said by telephone.
He praised Navalny’s efforts to uncover possible misdeeds of Transneft management, saying Navalny was emboldened by Medvedev’s hallmark campaign against corruption.
Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov called for an investigation into the embezzlement allegations Wednesday, RIA-Novosti reported.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, Transneft’s auditor that was heavily criticized by Navalny for ignoring his warnings, denied wrongdoing. “We believe there are absolutely no grounds for such allegations, and we stand behind our work for OAO AK Transneft,” PwC said in an e-mailed statement.
Transneft seemed to confirm the authenticity of the report, saying it was part of an initiative by the company’s new leadership, Vedomosti reported.
Long-serving Transneft chief Semyon Vainshtok — a career oilman, former LUKoil vice president and a Putin protege — was removed from the company under a cloud in late 2007 after it emerged that he had paid out more to charity than in dividends to shareholders. He briefly headed Olympstroi, the state corporation funneling billions of dollars to construction projects for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Denis Yevstratenko, director of Prosperity Capital Management, a minority shareholder in Transneft preferred stock, said his company had no specific response but that “when money is stolen from a company, it is a very negative thing.”
Eastern Capital, another fund manager and minority shareholder, declined to comment.
Prosperity Capital and Eastern Capital urged the government in August to sell 25 percent of Transneft’s common stock. Yevstratenko said this would make it “a proper company,” Bloomberg reported at the time. The calls were rejected by Transneft chief Nikolai Tokarev.
The government controls 100 percent of the ordinary voting shares in Transneft, while preferred shares are offered on the market.
One of the largest allegations of expropriated funds in Navalny’s Transneft report is in the “baseless inflation of estimated project-exploration values” as a part of the initial phase of the ESPO pipeline. The amount alleged to have been stolen is more than 10 billion rubles.
“Everything is demonstrated with numbers and facts. Every section is signed by several experts,” said Navalny, who posted scans of the document on his blog.
Navalny said he has sent letters to various law enforcement agencies, including the Prosecutor General’s Office, asking them to open an embezzlement investigation into the company.
Navalny is well-known as a campaigner against big oil and gas companies, although none of his previous allegations have prompted official investigations.
While Navalny’s revelations could create negative publicity for Transneft, there is unlikely to be any serious investigation, analysts said.
In the event of an investigation, Vainshtok, 63, might be called to testify as a witness but little more, said Alexei Mukhin, head of the Center for Political Information, a Moscow think tank. If he were summoned, “it might be the beginning of a house of cards collapsing,” Mukhin said, referring to the close links between the oil industry and the political elite.
Vainshtok moved to Israel in 2008. Written requests for comment to Israel Financial Levers Ltd., a property development company where Vainshtok works as a representative of the board of directors, went unanswered Wednesday.
He was replaced at Transneft by Tokarev, who worked with Putin in the presidential administration. “He believes that I can resolve complicated questions,” Tokarev told Vedomosti in 2008 about his relationship with Putin.
Navalny’s revelations about the ESPO pipeline might be in line with Tokarev’s wishes; Tokarev harshly criticized the previous management soon after assuming his post.
“The first thing Tokarev did was distance himself from all of the problems of his predecessor — and this was the right move,” a senior Federation Council senator with ties to the oil industry told The St. Petersburg Times. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the matter.
He said it was difficult to predict whether an investigation would be opened and suggested that the leaking of the report was aimed at warning Vainstok that he “hadn’t behaved correctly.” He did not elaborate.
Navalny, who first wrote about Transneft on his blog Tuesday, said he had spent months investigating Transneft and received documents from some people within the company. “There are many people working in the Audit Chamber and Transneft, and not all of them are thieves,” he said.
Vladimir Miliov, a former deputy energy minister and opposition politician, said the cooperation of officials within government bodies showed their dissatisfaction with large-scale corruption supported by some “mid-level bureaucrats.”
Mukhin, the analyst, agreed that Navalny’s actions might have been indirectly supported by government officials, describing Navalny as a “surfer catching a wave coming from circles close to the president.”
TITLE: City Prepares to Host International Tiger Summit
AUTHOR: By Sophie Gaitzsch
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Heads of governments and ministers from the 13 countries that remain home to wild tigers will meet next week at the St. Petersburg International Tiger Forum hosted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in an attempt to stop the decline of tiger populations.
Representatives of Russia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam are expected to commit to take action to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2022.
The prime ministers of Russia, China, Nepal, Bangladesh and Laos will be present, while other countries will be represented at a ministerial level, said a press service representative of Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment on Wednesday. Delegations from other states who support the cause will also attend the summit.
The wild tiger population is in steep decline. Current estimates put their number as low as 3,200. A century ago, there were 100,000 tigers. Wild tigers have completely disappeared from Transcaucasia and Central Asia, as well as from the Indonesian islands of Bali and Java. According to experts, they could become extinct by 2022 — the next year of the tiger according to the Chinese lunar calendar — if no action is taken.
On Tuesday, a Vietnamese man was arrested in Hanoi in possession of a 150-kilogram, 1.5-meter-long frozen tiger before he was able to sell the body to collectors, Agence France Presse reported. The man told police he had bought the animal for 600 million dong ($30,800) in the northeastern port town of Hai Phong, and planned to sell it for $46,000. He also reportedly told police that he planned to crush the tiger’s bones to make traditional medicine if he failed to find a buyer for the whole carcass. It is believed the tiger was smuggled into Vietnam from overseas.
This most recent incident is an illustration of the main threat to the endangered species today: The large-scale illegal hunting and trade of tigers for their body parts. According to a report carried out by the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic, parts of between 1,069 and 1,220 tigers have been seized in tiger range countries during the past decade — an average of 104 to 119 animals per year.
“With parts of potentially more than 100 wild tigers actually seized every year, one can only speculate what the true number of animals being plundered is,” said Pauline Verheij, the author of the report.
The second most urgent menace is loss of habitat. Tigers need large areas in which to live, and these areas are shrinking as a result of deforestation for agricultural purposes and industrial plantations producing tea, rubber, palm oil and pulp and paper. The fragmentation of landscapes due to the development of infrastructure is also an issue. It splits up tiger populations, making them more vulnerable.
“The point of the summit is to bring together high level politicians,” said Barney Long, tiger program manager for WWF in the U.S.
“It should open the way for the international community to work together. The issue of the declining tiger population is global, and cannot be solved without cooperation. We think that the chances of success are good and that the Global Tiger Recovery Program (GTRP) will be endorsed,” he said.
The GTRP, elaborated over the last 10 months by experts, governments and scientists, outlines the steps that must be taken during the next 12 years to double the big cats’ numbers. It also specifies what action each of the 13 countries must take. According to Andrei Kushlin, World Bank program coordinator for the Global Tiger Initiative international alliance, the forum’s program primarily focuses on strengthening legislation and law enforcement and on reinforcing the management of protected areas hosting wild tigers.
“Law enforcement is a problem in every park of every country,” said Long. “Criminals are extremely well organized and equipped, which is not the case for many of the protected areas. It is not unusual to see rangers patrolling huge territories on bicycles armed with weapons dating from the 1920s, while poachers have GPS technology and brand new vehicles. More effort, more people, and more equipment — including sometimes very basic things like camping materials — are urgently needed,” he added.
The GTRP also addresses the issue of demand, without which trafficking would not exist, with plans to raise public awareness, including through advertising campaigns, said Kushlin.
The two experts are fairly optimistic that the GTRP’s goal of boosting tiger numbers can be achieved.
“Doubling the global tiger population by 2022 is realistic: Political will can make it happen,” said Kushlin.
“If every country makes the right move now, it is possible, but it will probably take time,” said Long. “The most important thing is to reverse the decline, so if we get close to doubling the wild tiger population, we would already be very happy. Apart from political will, financing is a major problem in each of the range countries. If they manage to mobilize resources from the international community, then anything will be possible.”
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Seaport Official Arrested
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — The head of St. Petersburg Seaport’s property management was detained on suspicion of blackmail, Fontanka.ru reported.
According to the journalistic investigation agency AZhUR, the northwest federal district police reported they had detained the head of St. Petersburg Seaport’s property management Wednesday. The official is suspected of having used his rank to extort large sums of money from the companies involved in construction work near the seaport.
He was caught by the economic crimes department while accepting 500,000 rubles ($16,100) from one of the companies’ chief executives in exchange for patronage and for not obstructing construction work at the seaport.
The official ultimately intended to extort a total of 4 million rubles, the police say. A criminal case of corruption and blackmail has been filed.
TITLE: Criminal Case Opened Against Party Members
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: By launching an “extremism” criminal case against St. Petersburg activists of The Other Russia, the authorities are attempting to stop the Strategy 31 campaign of rallies in support of freedom of assembly while devising a mechanism for banning the party on a federal scale, the party’s local leader Andrei Dmitriyev said this week.
According to Dmitriyev, who was charged last week with organizing activities of an extremist organization — an offense punishable by up to three years in prison — the investigators do not distinguish between The Other Russia, the party that author and oppositional politician Eduard Limonov launched earlier this year, and the National Bolshevik Party (NBP), his previous political party, which was banned by a Moscow court in 2007.
“They are examining not only instances from the past, from 2008 and 2009, but also Strategy 31, looking for an opportunity to include participation in it into this criminal case,” Dmitriyev said.
“This means that after the Dec. 31 event, more people might be charged as part of this criminal case. It reveals the political nature of this case, and the fact that its main objective is to stop the activities of The Other Russia in St. Petersburg, to make us sit at home and keep quiet, so that we don’t exist as a political factor. And, primarily, to put an end to gatherings outside Gostiny Dvor, to Strategy 31 as the most outstanding manifestation of our activities throughout the past year.”
Within the criminal case filed on Oct. 25, The Other Russia activist Andrei Pesotsky was charged with the same offense as Dmitriyev, while Alexander Yashin, Igor Boikov and Oleg Petrov were charged with participating in an extremist organization — a lesser offence punishable by up to two years in prison.
“During the past three years, all our activities were entirely in the public eye,” he said.
“Whatever we did — from Dissenters’ Marches to Strategy 31 — was entirely public; we have never concealed anything. […] But those activities are what we’re being charged with; there’s nothing more in the investigation […] We are charged with taking part in the political activities of an organization that we call The Other Russia, but they assume it is the NBP.”
Dmitriyev said that after he was detained during the Aug. 31 event, he was warned by an unnamed officer about the possibility of a criminal case being filed against the activists.
“He said, ‘Watch out, the guys at City Hall are very angry with you, be careful or there’ll be a criminal case.’ Actually, he said that ammunition might be planted on us.”
Dmitriyev said that the criminal case was masterminded by Vitaly Bykov, first deputy chief of the Interior Ministry’s northwest federal district headquarters, who, according to Dmitriyev, is in charge of the district’s anti-extremism agency Center E.
“We presume that he coordinated his actions with the heads of the Interior Ministry in Moscow, as well as with City Hall, because law-enforcers do not file such political and resonant criminal cases on a whim,” he said.
He said that the case could be seen as preparation for a criminal case against The Other Russia on a national scale.
“It’s no secret that its St. Petersburg branch is one of the strongest, and the investigators are not concealing that this case could serve as a precedent,” Dmitriyev said.
“It’s the first case of its size filed under this article of the Criminal Code; there are 15 investigators working on it and the case has been given priority status.”
According to Dmitriyev, Strategy 31 events in St. Petersburg will continue. The activists charged within the criminal case will not participate so as not to risk prison sentences, but the Dec. 31 rally will take place as planned.
“Our comrades will attend, our wives and girlfriends have expressed the desire to take part in the rally, and the event will go ahead,” he said.
“If they want to break up the activities of The Other Russia in St. Petersburg, instead of filing a criminal case, they’d have to put around 50 people in prison.”
Hundreds — including Yabloko Democratic Party’s local leader Maxim Reznik, the Moscow leader of the Solidarity Democratic Movement Ilya Yashin, and the local leader of the People’s Democratic Union (RNDS) Andrei Pivovarov — came to express solidarity with the activists at the Rally Against Political Repressions at Pionerskaya Ploshchad on Sunday.
City Hall authorized the rally, but participants were made to pass through metal detectors to get to the site, while a police helicopter made rounds over the protesters.
“Political repression, whoever it is against, is a dirty, heinous act, it stinks of the year 1937 [the peak of Stalin’s terror] from a mile off,” Reznik said at the rally.
“That’s why people shouldn’t be asked what their views are on the future development of Russia. What’s important for everyone today is that any person in Russia should have the right to express their point of view without fear.
“Even if you don’t agree with someone’s viewpoint, you should defend their right to hold it.”
TITLE: Court Clears Ex-Yevroset Staff
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A jury on Wednesday acquitted nine former Yevroset employees on kidnapping charges in a surprise ruling that a lawyer for Yevgeny Chichvarkin, the company’s self-exiled founder, touted as a reason to drop related charges against his client.
The Moscow City Court released all nine defendants immediately after the verdict, Interfax reported.
Chichvarkin’s lawyer Yury Gervis praised the ruling as “momentous,” saying by telephone that the criminal case against his client would have to be closed after the court ruling became valid, in 10 days, if prosecutors failed to appeal. It was not immediately clear whether an appeal would be filed.
The court will discuss the legal repercussions of the verdict Nov. 26, RIA-Novosti reported.
Gervis predicted that investigators would keep the case against Chichvarkin open “under false pretexts.”
Chichvarkin told Ekho Moskvy radio from London, where he is fighting a Russian extradition request, that he wanted all officials involved in the legal case against Yevroset and its employees to be prosecuted.
“Those who prosecuted the company, kept innocent people in custody for more than two years, robbed the market and are directly or indirectly guilty of several deaths have to stand trial,” Chichvarkin said, without elaborating.
The nine former Yevroset employees, including vice president Boris Levin and deputy head of security Andrei Yermilov, went on trial in late June on charges of kidnapping another Yevroset employee, Andrei Vlaskin, in 2003 in retaliation for supposedly selling cell phones stolen from the company.
Vlaskin himself was charged with reselling phones stolen from shipments to Yevroset, and he later paid 20 million rubles ($608,000) to settle the case.
Chichvarkin fled to Britain in December 2008.
Chichvarkin founded Yevroset in 1997 and built it into Russia’s largest mobile phone retailer. He sold it in September 2008 to billionaire Alexander Mamut, citing liquidity problems.
Chichvarkin claimed in May that police officers from the Interior Ministry’s department for high-tech crimes had been harassing Yevroset for years in a bid to take control of it.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Man Falls in Metro
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A man fell onto the tracks at Sportivnaya metro station at 10.50 a.m. on Tuesday, Fontanka.ru reported.
The man was taken to hospital where he remains in serious condition, the news site reported Yulia Shavel, a spokesperson for the metro, as saying.
According to Shavel, the man was drunk and lost his balance when standing on the edge of the platform.
Migrants Deported
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Seventy-seven migrants have been deported from St. Petersburg this year, Fontanka.ru reported, citing the Federal Migration Service for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast.
Businesses and the residential sector have been inspected more thoroughly, with the number of inspections increasing by 71.7 percent, the news portal reported. As a result, 78,000 violations in immigration and passport legislation were registered, and fines totaling 108 million rubles were issued.
A number of violations led to criminal cases being filed. These included 27 cases concerning the ‘multiple’ registration of foreign citizens at false addresses, and another 34 concerning the forgery, production or sale of forged documents.
Policeman Sentenced
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — A 33-year old police lieutenant colonel, Alexander Torgunov, has been sentenced to six years in a penal colony for fraud and is to pay a penalty of 50,000 rubles ($1,610), Fontanka reported. A court ruled that the officer was guilty of fraud and of illegally possessing ammunition.
According to the city’s prosecutor’s office, in April 2009, Torgunov was preparing to file criminal charges against the principal of School No. 216 for the misuse of the school’s budgetary funds. Although the charges were spurious, the principal paid him 100,000 rubles to drop the case.
Some months later, the officer demanded another 35,000 rubles from the principal and was detained by FSB officers while receiving the money on Dec. 17, Fontanka reported. The illegal ammunition was subsequently discovered.
TITLE: Nokia Says It Will Do Research at Skolkovo
AUTHOR: By Derek Andersen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Nokia committed on Wednesday to open a research facility at the Skolkovo high-tech innovation center being set up outside of Moscow.
A memorandum of understanding was signed in a ceremony at the Moskva-City business center, with representatives of the Finnish communications company and the Skolkovo Fund taking part.
Esko Aho, Nokia executive vice president and board member, said there that the “knowledge-intensive ecosystem that is being designed at Skolkovo” would suit Nokia’s development needs.
Victor Saeijs, CEO of Nokia Eurasia, said Russia will now join Europe, India and China as key sites of Nokia intellectual activity and will be the eighth country where the company has such a center.
The Nokia center at Skolkovo will work in cooperation with leading Russian universities and will employ about 25 technical specialists who will be Russian nationals.
In addition, “Nokia venture capital mechanisms will be extended to Skolkovo resident companies,” Aho said, but “the role of venture capital will depend on deal flow, which depends on the success of Skolkovo.”
Aho mentioned mobile computing, innovative health care applications, nanotechnology and quantum technology as fields of research at the new center. The center’s programmers will also work on development of the new MeeGo Linux-based software platform being jointly released by Nokia and Intel.
Skolkovo Fund president Viktor Vekselberg said they are looking for 10 to 15 foreign partners overall, and that the principle of participation is one of mutual benefit. He said he hopes that the fund will reach an agreement with Intel by the end of the year.
Vekselberg also promised that Skolkovo would begin co-financing projects this year. In the six months since its founding, Skolkovo has become involved in 50 high-tech projects, he said.
Aho declined to specify the size of Nokia’s investment in the Skolkovo center, saying only that there would be an “evolutionary process” and that total investment would amount to “double-digit millions of dollars.”
“Politicians … expect immediate results,” Aho said, but Nokia regards Skolkovo as a long-term project.
Vekselberg said he expects the partnership to “bear fruit in the nearest future.”
When asked about the likelihood of drawing emigre scientists back to the country, Vekselberg said Skolkovo “promises something” to scientists, but “it probably takes time for individual people to believe that.”
Aho said Nokia’s experience in India and China has been that experts return when “there is a high level of skill and talent” in place, but he added that it is “a long process.”
TITLE: Plan to Sell State Assets Agreed
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government expects to raise a total of 1 trillion rubles ($32 billion) from selling stakes in 10 state assets by 2013, Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina said Wednesday.
“The government has approved the project of the forecast plan for privatization in 2011-2013,” she told reporters after the cabinet meeting.
“The income from selling shares of the 10 largest companies will account for about 1 trillion rubles in 2011 to 2013,” Nabiullina said.
The government is ready to sell 7.97 percent minus one share of RusHydro and 4.11 percent minus one share of the Federal Grid Company, while the stakes to be sold in Sberbank and VTB will be 7.58 percent minus one share and 35.5 percent minus one share, respectively.
A 100 percent stake in the United Grain Company will be sold by 2012.
Nabiullina said the government plans to sell a stake of 50 percent minus one share in Sovkomflot and Rosagrolizing, 25 percent minus one share in Rosneft, Russian Railways and Rosselkhozbank.
The Rosselkhozbank stake might not be sold until 2015, Nabiullina said.
Another eight midsized companies, including Apetit and S7, whose state share packages are valued at 500 million rubles or more, will be sold next year, the minister said.
First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said last month that the government expected to raise a total of 1.8 trillion rubles by 2015 from privatizations of some 900 companies.
The details of asset sales for 2013-15 still need to be finalized.
The ministry plans to create a public database that would provide information on privatization of the state assets to make the process more transparent, Nabiullina said.
The database would include a list of government-owned companies and details of their operations, as well as information on the privatization process. Information on leased federal property will also be accessible, she said.
Meanwhile, Roman Goryunov, chief executive of the RTS stock exchange, expressed concern on Wednesday that the government was considering a London listing of shares of the companies to be privatized.
“We have heard that the Economic Development Ministry planned to list [the companies’ shares] in London. If this happens, we can forget about [Moscow as an] international financial center,” he told a conference in Moscow, Interfax reported.
All assets earmarked for privatization should be sold in Russia to support its financial market, Goryunov said.
Analysts said there was no reason to worry because most assets would likely be sold domestically.
“Of course, part of the assets may be sold in an IPO on foreign stock exchanges, but I think most will be sold in Russia,” said Yaroslav Lissovolik, chief economist at Deutsche Bank Russia.
Privatization itself is positive for Russia’s investment climate, he said, but the majority of listings should be made domestically to “give a new impulse” to Moscow’s aspiration to become a financial center.
TITLE: Chichvarkin Offers Helping Hand With IPO
AUTHOR: By Derek Andersen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Former Yevroset co-owner Yevgeny Chichvarkin would be happy to lend a hand in the company’s upcoming initial public offering, he said in an interview published Tuesday.
“I have a lot of free time now,” he told the RBC Daily newspaper during a London interview. “If anyone made me an offer, I’d be interested.”
Chichvarkin said he could participate in meetings with investors or act as a consultant.
“I have no complaints against the current shareholders,” Chichvarkin said. He sold his interest in the company to businessman Alexander Mamut in September 2008 for an undisclosed sum, which has been estimated at $200 million to $400 million.
“I think Yevroset’s business was substantially undervalued in 2008, and I have an interest in the company’s being valued as high as possible during the IPO,” Chichvarkin said.
Yevroset president Alexander Malis told RBC Daily that he “hadn’t thought about” a role for Chichvarkin in the IPO, which may take place next year.
Yevroset is now jointly owned by Mamut and mobile operator VimpelCom, to which Mamut sold a 49.9 percent share in the company for $226 million a month after buying it.
Vedomosti has reported that Mamut plans to sell at least 30 percent of the company. VimpelCom has not decided whether it will sell part of its stake.
Chichvarkin, who was also active in liberal politics, fled Russia for London shortly after the Yevroset sale, to avoid kidnapping charges that he says were politically motivated.
TITLE: Daily Moscow Commute Increases
AUTHOR: By Derek Andersen
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Forty percent of Muscovites spend more than an hour each way commuting to work or school, according to a survey by the state-run VTsIOM polling agency published Tuesday.
The trip takes between 30 minutes and an hour for 27 percent of the population, and only 4 percent reach their destination in less than half an hour. A full 29 percent don’t go to school or work at all.
For comparison, Forbes found earlier this year that the average American spends 26 minutes commuting one way.
Moving closer to their place of employment is not an option for most.
Buying an apartment is a possibility for only a limited number of people, said Anna Ivanova of the Real Estate Market Indicators analytical agency.
“A young family has little chance of moving from the suburbs to Moscow,” Ivanova said, “and a 25-year mortgage is hard to get.”
TITLE: Magnitsky One Year On
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: One year has passed since
37-year-old Sergei Magnitsky died while being held on trumped-up charges in a Moscow pretrial detention center. Magnitsky was a lawyer at Firestone Duncan law firm and defended Heritage Capital, once the largest foreign investment fund in Russia. His death, which was caused by the prison authorities’ refusal to provide medical care, falls under the international definition of torture and essentially qualifies as extrajudicial execution.
Magnitsky’s death on Nov. 16. 2009, was followed in April by the death in pretrial detention of Vera Trifonova. She was a seriously ill businesswoman who, given her poor health, should never have been held in prison pending trial. She was mocked by prison officials, who told her that the best way to cure her ills was to sleep standing up.
Most Russians were enraged by these two prison deaths. The sharp public response — particularly among bloggers — prompted President Dmitry Medvedev to examine widespread abuses in pretrial detention centers and in prisons. To Medvedev’s credit, several Moscow prison chiefs and regional Federal Prison Service heads have been fired over the incidents. In addition, Medvedev submitted amendments to the State Duma that ban pre-trial detentions for most economic crimes under Article 33 of the Criminal Code. These detentions have all too often provided Interior Ministry officials opportunities to extort money from individuals accused of crimes.
But the picture is mixed one year later. The Duma approved the president’s amendments, and Medvedev announced major reforms to the Interior Ministry to create a more professional police force. The system has improved by one criterion: Fewer people have been imprisoned as a result. In the first nine months of 2010, the number of people sentenced to prison terms dropped by 7.2 percent compared to the same period last year, according to the Supreme Court’s judicial department. More significantly, according to the Federal Penitentiary Service, the total number of accused held in pretrial detention dropped by 10 percent — from 131,400 to 120,100.
At the same time, however, Moscow City chief justice Olga Yegorova said that in the last six months, the court had rejected fewer than 6 percent of petitions (36 of 649) for the arrest of businesspeople. This shows in part what many had expected after Medvedev announced the restrictions on holding businesspeople in pretrial detention centers — that the courts have been largely able to bypass the presidential amendments by claiming that the activities of the entrepreneurs were not related to business.
This was clearly demonstrated in the second trial against former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev. The judge in the case could have denied investigators the right to hold them in pretrial detention on the new charges, although this was an academic issue only since Khodorkovsky and Lebedev would have remained in prison anyway based on their conviction in the first trial.
At the same time, though, the prosecutor took pity on the oligarch and asked the court that he remain only an extra 14 years behind bars, instead of the expected 22 1/2 years.
Legal experts and businesspeople say the conveyor belt of arrests of entrepreneurs has only slightly slowed down. The largest reduction of arrests has occurred among small businesses that are a less attractive target for corrupt investigators and prison officials. But the problem remains among larger, more prosperous businesspeople.
The investigation into Magnitsky’s death ran up against stiff opposition from Interior Ministry officials who were implicated by Firestone Duncan, Hermitage and others for embezzling government funds, seizing companies owned by Hermitage and causing Magnitsky’s death. Adding insult to injury, several of these investigators were recently awarded professional honors. In addition, on Monday, Irina Dudukina, a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Committee, claimed that it was Magnitsky and Hermitage who had misappropriated 5.4 billion rubles ($230 million) in budgetary funds, not Interior Ministry officials.
Meanwhile, Medvedev continues his legislative battle against widespread abuses by Interior Ministry officials against businesspeople. But it remains to be seen whether new, tougher laws will significantly halt the high level of extortion and number of pretrial detentions of entrepreneurs.
Supreme Court chief justice Vyacheslav Lebedev has not given much reason to be optimistic. He recently said judges still see businesspeople as their “class enemies.” Just like during the worst periods of the Soviet era.
This comment appeared as an editorial in Vedomosti.
TITLE: The Khodorkovsky Cancer
AUTHOR: By Konstantin Sonin
TEXT: Last week, a political leader who had spent the past seven years in custody was set free. That leader once began a speech with these words: “It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”
Besides the fact that former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky also spent the last seven years in prison, there are few parallels between his situation and that of Myanmar political figure and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the person who spoke those words. The party that Suu Kyi led won a near landslide victory in 1990 elections, and only military force enabled the junta to retain power in Burma (officially renamed Myanmar after the junta gained control) and to arrest the person who should rightfully rule the country. In the case of Russia, everything was just the opposite. The decisive victory for pro-Kremlin parties in the 2003 State Duma elections after Khodorkovsky was arrested in October 2003 laid the foundation for the current vertical power system.
However, Suu Kyi’s words ring just as true for Russia as they do for Myanmar. The show trial against Khodorkovsky is a huge malignant tumor that has crippled the Russian political system. Its metastasis has far more serious consequences than simply the arrest of an outspoken oligarch and the dismantling and appropriation of Yukos. It set a negative precedent for the courts, which had only just been starting to take shape in the 1990s, by demonstrating that political interference is a natural part of judicial procedure. After two difficult decades of attempting to establish an independent and viable judicial system, we ended up back where we were in 1991 — with the courts serving as an extension of the political leadership’s power structure.
The implications for the political system were no less dramatic. Having turned the political dispute with Khodorkovsky into a battle to the death, his opponents turned out to be hostages themselves. In fall 2007, the fear of having to step down from power prompted President Vladimir Putin to deal the final death blow to the system of parliamentary elections, but the natural question arises: Why would Putin need to take such extreme measures to hold on to power if the country he is ruling is democratic?
Putin and the Kremlin’s political machine have spent most of its resources in pursuing one goal: the preservation of the status quo. For this reason, personal loyalty to Putin becomes increasingly important with each passing year. Needless to say, any system focused so entirely on maintaining the status quo is hardly capable of initiating a modernization program. Meaningful reforms and progress can only be achieved on the basis of open, democratic social and political institutions, and establishing those would take at least one or two full election cycles — up to a decade.
As with a malignant tumor, the campaign against Khodorkovsky has a malignant effect on the overall political and economic environment in the country. Meaningless statements about conditions under which he might one day be released will do nothing to stop the tumor from spreading even further into Russian governmental institutions.
Konstantin Sonin is a professor at the New Economic School in Moscow and a columnist for Vedomosti.
TITLE: Stationary movement
AUTHOR: By Olga Khrustaleva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Local dance enthusiasts will get the chance to try their hand at something different this weekend with a surreal and extraordinary project titled “Butoh Great Spirit.”
The joint dance project between Bereg art center and the Japan Foundation, which takes place in the city this weekend as part of the “Japanese Autumn” festival, comprises a performance, master classes, film showings and an exhibition.
The creation of Butoh dance dates back to the post-war years — the period of student riots and anguish following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — and is usually associated with two names: Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.
In the beginning, Hijikata created Ankoku-Butoh or “Dance of Darkness,” whose erotic, untamed content and movements represented a form of protest against the contemporary dance scene in Japan, which Hijikata believed was limited to imitating either the West or Noh, a traditional Japanese theater form. But the new art form was rejected by conservative Japanese society, and Hijikata became a Japanese dance community outcast. However, this unusual style spoke to many local cultural figures — dancers, poets and performers — which led to the birth of an underground Butoh culture.
When asked the question, “What is Butoh?” a Japanese dancer is most likely to avoid a direct answer, instead using metaphors such as “See how the river flows” or “The flower grows.” Such answers can be rather frustrating for those trying to get to the bottom of the matter, especially for Westerners, for whom quiescence is the last thing associated with dance.
“Who says that when standing still, I am not dancing?” These words spoken by Min Tanaka, one of the fathers of Butoh, express its very essence.
“Hijikata introduced a totally different approach, shifting the accent from the movements of the body to the body in itself,” wrote the musician and dance critic Sakurai Keisuke in an article for “Nipponia” magazine. “He saw dance as a conglomerate of body and form, existence and reality.”
Butoh shares elements with traditional Japanese art. There are no jumps or turns in Butoh, and the poses are reminiscent of Japan’s Kabuki and Noh forms of theater. Morita Itto, a member of the GooSayTen Japanese Butoh dance group, describes an ideal Butoh performance as when “the audience sees it’s not the dancer’s body, but a non-materialized world — as if a dancer’s body has become a prism allowing the audience to see something latent behind the performer. It is evidence of a return from a pilgrimage through the split parts of the self,
and a recovery or creation of his or her wholeness.”
Today, this avant-garde dance form has gained popularity far beyond Japan’s borders, with numerous shows taking place and dance schools opening all over the world. The goal of Butoh is to reveal and discover your real self, and to do that you have to forget who you are, say enthusiasts. Those who feel intrigued by the mysterious art will have the chance to give it a try this weekend, when Moe Yamamoto, a student of Tatsumi Hijikata and eminent figure in the world of Butoh, will give an exclusive performance and two master classes in St. Petersburg.
The name of the show, “Fukuchu no mushi” is virtually untranslatable into any other language, which is both mysterious and aggravating.
“We had paragraphs of text explaining the meaning of “Fukuchu no mushi,” but they were quite lengthy and complicated, so we decided to leave the title in Japanese,” said Alexandra Dunayeva, the event organizer at Art Bereg.
Together with lectures on the history of Butoh, a photo exhibition and films of Tatsumi Hijikata’s performances, the event aims to help audiences to form an idea of what Butoh really is — a concept that will no doubt be different for every individual.
Moe Yamamoto performs in “Fukuchu no mushi” at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Litsedei Theater, 9 Ulitsa Lva Tolstogo. The performance will be followed at 9 p.m. by two short black and white films of Tatsumi Hijikata’s performances: “Rebellion of the body” (1968) and “Story of Smallpox” (1972). Tel: 635 7003
A lecture, master classes and exhibition of rare photos of Tatsumi Hijikata will be held at the Mikhail Shemyakin Fund, 11 Sadovaya Ulitsa, through the weekend. Tel: 310-02-75, 310-25-14
For a full program, see www.artbereg.ru.
TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: Pete Doherty is due to perform in St. Petersburg for the first time ever this week. The former Libertine, who has played in Moscow a couple of times, will perform at 8 p.m. at Kosmonavt on Thursday. (Kosmonavt is a great new music venue opened in the former Soviet movie theater of the same name, close to Tekhnologichesky Institut metro.)
According to promoter Light Music, Doherty will perform solo, accompanying himself on guitar, and his set is expected to last no less than one hour and 40 minutes. Expect “What Katy Did,” “Killamangiro,” “Albion” and “Fuck Forever.”
Los Angeles-based band Fol Chen will not only perform in St. Petersburg, but also record a song with the help of local musicians and fans whom they invite to come to a session.
Also visiting the city for the first time, Fol Chen will perform in support of its latest album “Part II: The New December,” described by The New York Times as “a dystopian sci-fi opus about a planet-wide battle that involves both environmental devastation and an erosion of language and meaning.” Fol Chen has been said to play a combination of “modern chamber music and poppy funk… squeezed through cheap samplers.”
The band will perform at Chinese Pilot Jao Da on Wednesday, and on Thursday will hold a highly original workshop/recording session at the same venue.
Members of the group Samuel Bing and Sinosa Loa are inviting local musicians (and curious non-musicians) to join them in recording a new Fol Chen song, which will then be released on the group’s next album, or as a single. The collaborative music project will offer insight into how one of the most exciting new bands in the U.S. goes about composing and producing its music.
Musical skills are not a prerequisite, the press release says, but musicians are encouraged to bring their own instruments.
Those wishing to join in should RSVP to folchenworkshop@gmail.com or just show up at 1 p.m. on Thursday.
Moscow-based Vezhlivy Otkaz, one of the finest bands to come out of the Soviet rock explosion in the 1980s, will return to St. Petersburg for a rare concert for the first time since 2003. Led by Roman Suslov, the band will perform at the newly-opened club Shum on Friday.
Noize MC, the Moscow-based rapper who made news when he was sentenced to 10 days in prison for allegedly insulting the police in a song and in comments made while performing in Volgograd, before emerging from jail with a brilliant song about violence and corruption in the Russian police, will perform at Kosmonavt on Friday.
Catch the legendary Tuvan throat singers Huun Huur Tu at the Shostakovich Philharmonic Hall, or British ska-punk band Random Hand at Tantsy, both on Saturday.
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Tales of a Russian war correspondent
AUTHOR: By Ksenia Galouchko
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Anna Badkhen has covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir, Somalia and the Middle East. Having grown up in Russia and worked for The St. Petersburg Times and The Moscow Times, Badkhen moved to the United States in 2004 and has since worked as a war correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, The New Republic and Foreign Policy. This year she published two books — “Peace Meals” and “Waiting for Taliban” — both of which are journalistic accounts of the civilian lives implicated by war. Here, Badkhen talks about her new books, her growth as a war correspondent and what makes her return to conflict zones.
How has your life changed since you left The Moscow Times?
I left The Moscow Times in 2000 and started freelancing for American publications. When the war in Afghanistan began in 2001, the San Francisco Chronicle, which was one of the publications I freelanced for, asked me to cover the war for them, so I did that and then very shortly was hired on staff and then worked as a staff writer for the Chronicle until 2007. I covered the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, Israel, West Bank, Kashmir, Somalia, and I moved to the States in 2004 because so much of my work was not in Russia that it just wasn’t necessary to be based in Moscow anymore.
Was leaving Russia your own choice? Did you always want to be a war correspondent?
My husband is American, I have two children who had to attend English-language schools in Moscow, and honestly, traffic was complicated, they spent 3 1/2 hours every day in traffic. It also became increasingly difficult to work as a war correspondent in Russia. Society was becoming increasingly xenophobic. I can’t say I myself felt the government pressure directly, but people seemed less open to the idea of speaking to American journalists and there was much less interest for my audience and for my publication in Russia. The American readers’ interest transitioned to the coverage of Iraq, to a lesser degree to Afghanistan, other points in the Middle East. There was simply no need to be based in Russia. So I moved to the States. My husband works for The Boston Globe, and he was their Moscow bureau chief for many years, and we decided we could both move to Massachusetts, so he could work in Boston and I could continue traveling.
You have published two books this year. How are they different?
“Peace Meals” is a summary of the Bush decade. It’s a travelogue about war and humanity, but it follows the trajectory of American-led wars in the Middle East and Asia, and in the Caucasus. I started working on that book in 2008. It was a product of scrupulous and hard work, a more traditional book. The other book, “Waiting for Taliban,” is a result of a series of dispatches I wrote for Foreign Policy magazine that came out in the spring of this year, a travelogue about what is happening in Northern Afghanistan, why Taliban is returning, a very personal and very opportunistic series of dispatches. When I came back, my editor said, this looks like an e-book, and this was the first e-book that Foreign Policy put out, and it’s been actually very successful, although there hasn’t been traditional publicity for it. In late May we started talking about the e-book, and the e-book came out in September, so the turnaround time was much shorter than with “Peace Meals,” and the book was much more immediate. Had this been a traditional book, it wouldn’t have come out until late 2011-2012, by which time it wouldn’t have been as expedient, with how rapidly things change in Afghanistan.
Who are the heroes of “Peace Meals”?
The book is about fellow travelers, so mostly about people who put me up or traveled with me — translators, drivers, local journalists. Replacement families that you accumulate when you are in a conflict zone, are very important to you. It’s possible that your host family is the last family you’re going to see, or the last family to see you alive. It’s a tribute to all the companions I’ve had over the last 10 years.
Do you identify your political position in your books?
I very strongly identify that I believe in humanity. What I try to do is paint a very intimate portrait of people who moved me, so that my audience is moved by them as well and so that my audience can empathize with people who live in extreme conditions and therefore make up their opinion of the world based on a more informed understanding of the world. It’s very easy to dismiss conflict zones as these cartoon landscapes: There are millions of nameless and unsung people who were never named and will never be named, whom news reports refer to as nameless victims, almost as if they were nameless stage props. Whereas, in fact, each person who lives and perishes in the conflict zone has a family, has interests, desires, hopes, loves somebody. My task was portraying people who are generally seen as worthless because of where they are and because of geopolitical decisions often made by more powerful countries. Treating them as human, making them human, bringing them closer to my audience, making them easier for my audience to understand, this is why I do what I do, and this is what I think the book does.
What was your biggest shock of reality as a young war correspondent?
The biggest surprise was to understand how much humanity, joy and love manages to survive in the most extreme, dire situations.
It was a surprise, but a good surprise. We need more war correspondents. We aren’t hearing all the stories there are, and people who are telling these stories don’t have all the outlets they need.
TITLE: Down by the river
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Despite the grey skies, the glamorous floating restaurant moored in the proximity of the Avrora cruiser looked inviting. We weren’t really planning a cruise — though Volga-Volga offers several per day — and were more in the mood for a meal with a classic St. Petersburg view over the Neva River.
When we arrived early on a Sunday afternoon, the waiters almost outnumbered the guests. Apart from us, there was just one other couple having lunch. Within an hour, however, the place had become much more lively, with the stylish waiters, dressed in mock naval uniforms, moving swiftly and discreetly between the tables. The restaurant has essentially one vast room, seating more than 100 people, and an open terrace on top of the boat, though the terrace is closed in bad weather.
The cuisine at Volga-Volga is probably best described as fusion with an accent on seafood. The chef favors tuna, crab, shrimps and scallops, among other ingredients.
Six out of seven cold starters are fish dishes, from oysters (250 rubles or $8 per oyster) to dorado carpaccio (490 rubles, $15.80) and tuna sashimi in soy-mint sauce (590 rubles, $19).
The salad list offers far more variety. Light leaf salad with crab, mango, tangerine and cherry tomatoes (580 rubles, $18.70) turned out to be a healthy fruity heap that arrived in a large transparent bowl that looked generous enough to feed both of us. The chef was generous with the crabmeat and creative with the sauce, which was sweet, fruity and resembled freshly squeezed mango juice in both taste and texture.
My dining companion was in no mood for a similar starter, which he declared “girlie” and opted instead for a bowl of soup. Cream chowder with seafood and crispy baguette topped with melted cheese (490 rubles, $19) won high marks for the tangy piquant flavor, and wonderfully supple consistency.
After toying with the idea of ordering fish-and-seafood dumplings (980 rubles, $31.60), which the menu claims is one of the venue’s most popular dishes, and resisting the temptation to go for a black cod soaked in miso and garnished with a light salad (1,360 rubles, $43.80), we decided to continued the crab theme. White asparagus in Hollandaise sauce with crab and poached quail eggs (870 rubles, $28) — one of the lightest main courses on offer — was delicately prepared and exquisite on the tastebuds. Scallops in citrus sauce (860 rubles, $27.70) did not disappoint either, winning praise for the tenderness of the seafood and the mild zest of the sauce.
In line with the maritime theme, the restaurant also holds oyster parties on Fridays and Saturdays, offering French oysters prepared according to a recipe dating back to the era of Peter the Great, featuring black caviar and sour cream.
For 4,900 rubles ($158), Volga-Volga offers an enormous grilled seafood and fish platter that includes scallops, shrimps, crab, white fish, squids, mussels and spiny lobster. Alternatively, the same money buys you the same assortment as a starter, but served fresh on ice. Both dishes are designed for two people to share.
By the time we had finished our lunch, it was almost 3 p.m., which is advertized on the restaurant’s web site as the departure time for a one-hour cruise along the Neva. By that time, we were not opposed to extending our stay on the boat, and rather fancied the idea of a boat trip. In the warmer months of the year, the boat operates four cruises daily between the Avrora battleship and Blagoveshchensky bridge. At the moment, however, the trips have been reduced to two a day, departing at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. — and even those are not guaranteed, staff told us. The fate of each trip is decided on the spot, just minutes before the scheduled departure time, and depends directly on the number of guests. In short, trips can easily be cancelled if the venue happens to have no more than a handful of customers at that given moment, so do not rely on the service — unless you turn up with a large party of seafaring friends.
TITLE: Qantas to Replace 40 Engines
AUTHOR: By Rohan Sullivan and Greg Keller
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: SYDNEY — As many as half of the 80 Rolls-Royce engines that power some of the world’s largest jetliners may have to be replaced after an oil leak caused a fire and the partial disintegration of one on a Qantas flight this month, the Australian national airline’s chief executive said Thursday.
The 40 potentially faulty engines on the Airbus A380 would need to be replaced with new engines while the fault is fixed, raising the specter of engine shortages that could delay future deliveries of the 7-story-tall superjumbo.
It was not clear how serious the problem would be, but the comments by Qantas CEO Alan Joyce were the most definite accounting yet of a problem that now appears larger than first imagined when one of his airline’s engines came apart over Indonesia, spewing metal shrapnel into a wing and severing vital operating systems.
Qantas has grounded its fleet of six A380s, each powered by four of the giant Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines. Joyce told reporters that Qantas may have to replace 14 engines, each worth about $10 million.
Rolls-Royce has indicated that the number of engines that needed to be replaced was “40 engines worldwide,” he said.
“That’s what they think they’ll have to change,” he said.
Rolls-Royce has remained virtually silent since Nov. 4 as its stock price has dropped. The company was scheduled to hold a news conference at a major biennial air show in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai on Wednesday, but canceled it, without giving a reason.
Lufthansa said it would only have to change one of the Trent 900 engines on its three A380s. Singapore Airlines, which flies 11 of the superjumbos, declined to comment on whether it may have to change as many as 25 engines.
Aviation regulators have said Rolls-Royce intends to provide new engines to put on planes while the faulty ones are repaired. Airlines typically keep some spares, and Airbus has talked of sending replacement engines from its assembly lines, but the need to replace 40 engines could still cause significant disruption to airline schedules.
“Rolls-Royce are still working through the criteria for which engines need to be changed,” Joyce said. “We’re hoping to understand precisely which engines need to be replaced and therefore we can have a firm timeline for when they will be back in the air, but we are still a few days away from that.”
Investigators say leaking oil caught fire in the Qantas engine on Nov. 4 and heated metal parts, causing them to disintegrate. Experts say chunks of flying metal cut hydraulics and an engine-control line in the wing of the A380, causing the pilots to lose control of the second engine and some of the brake panels on the damaged wing in a situation far more serious than originally portrayed by Qantas.
The Sydney-bound flight returned to Singapore where it made an emergency landing, safely ending the most serious safety incident for the world’s newest and largest passenger plane.
TITLE: Myanmar’s Democracy Icon Gives Press Interview
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi said Thursday that her recent release from seven years of detention did not signal a softening in the military’s harsh, decades-long rule of the Southeast Asian nation.
In an interview, Suu Kyi called her detention illegal and said she was released simply because the decreed period of her house arrest had ended.
“I don’t think there were any other reasons,” she said in an interview in her small, Spartan office, decorated with little except a vase of flowers and a black and white photograph of her late father, Aung San, who helped lead colonial Burma to independence from Britain. “My detention had come to an end and there were no immediate means of extending it.”
The 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, set free from her lakeside residence Saturday, has made it clear she plans to pursue her goal of a democratic Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, but has been careful not to verbally challenge the junta or call for its overthrow.
Her most recent detention began in 2003 after she was blamed for an attack by government thugs on her convoy. It was extended in 2009 when she briefly sheltered an American man who swam uninvited to her decaying villa.
“I never should have faced detention,” she said.
Since Saturday, though, the generals and their longtime archrival have had no contact.
“I haven’t seen any sign of the junta at all since I came out. They haven’t made any move to let us know what they feel about the situation,” said Suu Kyi, an unflappable and deeply charismatic woman who speaks with an upper-class British accent.
She added, though, that her goals would not change: “I had better go on living until I see a democratic Burma,” she said, laughing.
She has called for face-to-face talks with junta leader General Than Shwe to reach national reconciliation.
Suu Kyi has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years but has remained the dominant figure of Myanmar’s battered pro-democracy movement. More than 2,200 political prisoners remain behind bars.
A week before her release, a military-backed political party swept the first elections in 20 years amid widespread accusations that the balloting was rigged. Final results have yet to be announced, but some military candidates took 90 percent or more of the votes in their constituencies.
Many observers believe her release was timed to shift attention from the elections and the international condemnation of them.
“It’s a public relations maneuver to appease domestic opinion as well as the international community, and to deflect attention from the fraudulent Nov. 7 election,” Bertil Lintner, a prominent writer on Myanmar, said in an e-mail.
Suu Kyi acknowledged in the interview that her years of political work had been difficult for her family.
“I knew there would be problems,” she said of her midlife decision to go into politics. “If you make the choice you have to be prepared to accept the consequences.”
Suu Kyi, who was largely raised overseas, married the British academic Michael Aris and raised their two sons, Kim and Alexander, in England.
But in 1988, at age 43, she returned home to take care of her ailing mother as mass demonstrations were breaking out against military rule. She was quickly thrust into a leadership role, mainly because she was the daughter of Aung San.
The personal costs of that have been staggering. She was unable to see her husband before he died of cancer in 1999. She has not seen her sons in a decade, and has never met her two grandchildren.
She refuses to leave Myanmar, even during her brief periods of freedom, fearing she would not be allowed to return.
She said her sons had suffered particularly badly, but added that she always had their support: “My sons are very good to me,” she said. “They’ve been very kind and understanding all along.”
TITLE: Central Bank Expects Ireland to Take EU-IMF Loan of Billions of Euros
AUTHOR: By Shawn Pogatchnik
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: DUBLIN — The governor of the Central Bank of Ireland said Thursday he expects his debt-crippled country to accept a loan worth tens of billions of euros soon from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
Patrick Honohan made his frank assessment as forensic accountants and financial specialists from the EU and IMF landed in Dublin to identify the size of the hole in state and bank finances and the measures needed to reassure markets that Ireland won’t default on debts.
Those doubts have risen since September when Finance Minister Brian Lenihan raised the government’s estimated cost of bailing out five Irish banks to at least 45 billion euros ($62 billion). That gargantuan bill has driven Ireland’s 2010 deficit to 32 percent of GDP, a post-war European record. Ireland is planning a four-year austerity plan, including a 2011 budget with 4.5 billion euros in cuts and 1.5 billion euros in new taxes, in response.
Honohan, speaking in Frankfurt where was attending a meeting of the European Central Bank board, said he expected the EU-IMF loan — if approved by the Irish government — to provide a financial “buffer” for Irish banks that would not be used. He compared it to similar U.S. moves in 2008 to inject banks with cash that reassured investors and was eventually repaid.
“It’s true that our banks need additional confidence. ... There have been substantial outflows of capital from Irish banks since April,” Honohan said in an interview with Irish state broadcasters RTE.
As foreign investors have withdrawn or failed to renew deposits in Dublin banks, the ECB and Irish Central Bank have filled the gap with loans estimated to total 130 billion euros.
TITLE: WikiLeaks Creator Faces Arrest Warrant
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: STOCKHOLM — Swedish prosecutors said they will seek an international arrest warrant for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after a court approved their request Thursday to detain him for questioning in a rape case.
The Australian is suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion in an investigation that stems from his encounters with two women during a visit to Sweden in August.
He has denied the allegations and insisted his sexual relations with the women were consensual.
His lawyers lashed out at Swedish investigators Thursday, saying Assange had offered to be questioned before he left Sweden and later in Britain, in person or by phone, videoconferencing, e-mail, or to make a sworn statement.
“All of these offers have been flatly refused by a prosecutor who is abusing her powers by insisting that he return to Sweden,” said Mark Stephens, Assange’s British lawyer. He added that the allegations were “false and without basis.”
Assange, 39, a veteran computer hacker, founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and it has published almost 500,000 secret U.S. documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Assange has urged U.S. authorities to investigate possible human rights abuses by American troops during the two conflicts. He also has complained that he and his group are being targeted and persecuted by intelligence agencies from the United States and elsewhere who are angry over the leaks of the secret military documents.
Director of Public Prosecution Marianne Ny said she sought Thursday’s court order to detain Assange because “So far, we have not been able to meet with him to accomplish the interrogation.”
After the Stockholm District Court approved her request, she told The Associated Press she would seek Assange’s arrest through Interpol. His whereabouts were not immediately known.
Assange had considered setting up a base for WikiLeaks in Sweden, where some of its servers are located, but Swedish immigration authorities denied him a residence permit. Earlier this month, he said he was considering immigrating to Switzerland instead.
Court documents filed by the prosecutor show Assange is suspected of raping and sexually molesting a woman in the town of Enkoping in central Sweden. He’s suspected of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion of the second woman, in Stockholm.
A police report obtained by The Associated Press shows that both women had met Assange in connection with a seminar he gave in Stockholm on Aug. 14. The report shows the women filed their complaints together six days later.