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MOSCOW — Interior Ministry officers, armed with assault rifles, raided the Moscow head office of leading electronics retailer Eldorado on Wednesday morning after a criminal investigation was opened into alleged nonpayment of about $300 million in taxes. Investigators from the Interior Ministry’s Central Federal District branch searched the company’s headquarters after about 20 heavily armed officers, including rapid reaction troops, had cleared Eldorado employees out of the building. A criminal case for tax evasion totaling 7 billion rubles ($300 million) was opened “several days ago” by the investigative arm of the Interior Ministry’s Central Federal District branch, said Anzhela Kastuyeva, spokeswoman for the branch. |
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 Members of the left and right wing political opposition will be looking for common ground during a conference in St. Petersburg on Saturday aimed at forming a unified strategy to win more support from the public. |
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MOSCOW — Russian police have charged the head of Hermitage Capital Management investment fund Bill Browder with tax evasion in absentia, Kommersant business daily reported on Thursday quoting sources. Browder, a British citizen, has been a major investor in Russia since the 1990s. He has been barred from Russia since Nov. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — Among the 96 miners spending their eighth straight day underground at the Little Red Riding Hood mine, the mood is grimly defiant, local union officials said Wednesday. The miners, and many of their colleagues shut out of the same mine complex by owner United Company RusAl since last week, are calling for higher salaries and better working hours. Yet they have one overriding fear: that the company will quit the struggling bauxite mines, on which more than 5,000 miners depend for their livelihoods in Severouralsk, a town 450 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg, for good. “We are RusAl’s hostages,” said Igor Taroyev, a blaster who has worked at the pit for 19 years. |
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CHEERS!
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A visitor raises her glass at the Stepan Razin Beer Museum which reopened on Thursday following extensive renovation works. The museum focuses on Russian and foreign brewing and drinking traditions. |
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MOSCOW — Britain has granted political asylum to a journalist who fled Russia saying her life was in danger because of her criticism of the Kremlin, she told Reuters. The Home Office declined to confirm if Yelena Tregubova had been granted asylum, saying the government did not comment on individual cases. Tregubova said by telephone from London that she had received a letter from the Home Office informing her that her application for political asylum had been approved.
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The aide to slain State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova fears investigators have given up trying to establish who ordered the shooting as the Federal Security Service confirmed Wednesday that the investigation into the case has been suspended. “There are no investigative activities in the case at the moment. |
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The global career and education network Quacquarelli Symonds and GreenTown Consulting Group will hold an MBA Forum in St. Petersburg next week. This is the first time that the event is being held in the city, providing an opportunity for MBA candidates to meet the admissions officers of international business schools. |
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MOSCOW — Russia’s largest mobile operator, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), has offered $1 billion for 97 percent of regional operator SMARTS, Vedomosti business daily reported on Thursday, quoting sources. |
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MOSCOW — Russian oil firm TNK-BP, half-owned by BP, said on Thursday it considered recent raids by security services officers and the arrest of an employee as one-off incidents, not a broad attack on the firm. The firm’s chief executive Robert Dudley also said he expected to close a long-awaited deal with Russian state gas giant Gazprom around the huge Kovykta deal at the end of April, saying he was not aware of any bigger deal involving the buyout of TNK-BP itself. |
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Power Plants Planned n ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Sevzapenergomontage and ITM Group have founded a joint venture for the construction of power plants in St. |
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Although the credit crunch in the United States and Europe and ensuing fund market crisis has affected real estate prices all over the globe — last year real estate price growth in Western Europe was limited to 2-5 percent — a sharp increase in prices has been registered in developing countries, according to a survey issued Wednesday by Knight Frank consultancy. |
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The labor movement has been making a lot of headlines lately. Workers at multinational companies were the first to strike for higher wages, but now the conflict has spread to Russian firms. In mid-March, workers at the KamAZ car plant — the former flagship of Soviet industry — walked out on their jobs, and by the end of the month, bauxite miners in the Urals were also striking. In all of these conflicts, company management has justified their extremely aggressive behavior by blaming workers for Labor Code violations while at the same time denying striking workers the right to conduct negotiations through their elected union representatives. The reason is that management refuses to recognize the legitimacy of worker-formed unions. |
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 The U.S. presidential candidates are increasingly playing the Russophobia card in their campaigns. In addressing Russia, Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton have resorted to insulting President Vladimir Putin as a KGB spy who has no soul. |
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If any country has a record of poor road safety, it is certainly Russia. Perhaps this is what qualifies Russia to host a landmark conference on the issue next year. The country’s top traffic police officer, Viktor Kiryanov, told the United Nations General Assembly this week that Russia wanted to host the world’s first ministerial-level conference on road safety. |
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 “The older I become, the closer I feel to Russia,” the Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky said recently over tea at a Manhattan hotel. And he seemed surprised to hear himself say it. “If you had talked to me 10 or 15 years ago, I would have said I do not really care about this,” Hvorostovsky, 45, said. |
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One thing I’ve missed in the post-Soviet period is the brilliant Russian political joke (àíåêäîò). Under Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, jokes were invented and made the rounds but for some reason, the punch seemed to go out of them. |
 Take a punk/new wave anthem from the late 1970s or early 1980s and perform it as a soft bossa nova number with gorgeous female vocals on top, and, if it’s done well, the public is won over — even in the U.K., where French acts have not really ever had any notable success. In February, Nouvelle Vague sold out its British tour in no time and added another London show at Forum on Dec. 4, 2008, “due to phenomenal demand. |
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 A cloud of uncertainty is lingering over the future of Makharbek Vaziev, the man who has led the ballet division of the world-renowned Mariinsky Theater for the past 12 years. |
 Written in 1946 but first published only 25 years later, “Unforgiving Years” is Victor Serge’s last novel. This is the first time it has appeared in English, and it has found an excellent translator in Richard Greeman, who captures the zest and poetry of Serge’s writing and provides an admirable introduction to Serge’s work. |
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STRUNINO, Vladimir Region — Valentina Pavlenko first met U.S. seaman Bill Rowgraft at a large dance party in Arkhangelsk. Pavlenko, then 15, knew she would pay a heavy price for falling in love with the bright-eyed sailor depicted in a photo that she has kept for the past 65 years. |
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Hundreds of girls swooned over British and U.S. sailors at three entertainment lounges set up by Soviet authorities during World War II. Some also made money on the side, selling sexual favors. But several women who frequented the Interclubs and the Federal Security Service flatly rejected the notion that the clubs served as brothels. |
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Lumiere // Grand Palace Complex, 15 Italianskaya Ulitsa. Tel: 449 9482 // www.lumiere-spb.ru // Open Wednesday through Sunday 6 p.m. through 1 a.m. // Credit cards accepted // Dinner for two: approximately 6,000 rubles ($245) There are Sunday afternoon painters and there are the Impressionists. |
 In “George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead,” the loosest, goosiest chapter in the filmmaker’s continuing zombieland epic, we meet the enemy and he is us, with video cameras. Set in Romero’s usual Pennsylvania stomping and chomping grounds (a.k.a. Canada), the story pivots on a clutch of University of Pittsburgh students who, in the process of fleeing legions of the undead — despite their obvious handicap, zombies always find fresh meat — have taken up cameras, thus becoming the producers of their own snuff biopic. |
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LONDON — The British inventor of a controversial device which disperses young people by emitting a high-pitched noise which only they can hear called Wednesday for legislation to regulate its use. Self-confessed “mad inventor” Howard Stapleton developed the Mosquito after his 15-year-old daughter was harassed by youths hanging around a local shop. |
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SEOUL — North Korea said on Thursday it was ready to give up dialogue and attack the South, ignoring a call from its wealthy neighbour’s new president to calm down and get back to serious talks. |
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 LONDON — Liverpool may have emerged from Arsenal with a 1-1 draw from Wednesday’s Champions League quarter-final first leg but their coach Rafa Benitez rejects the notion they are favourites to advance to the semi-finals. Benitez was delighted by his team’s outstanding defending at the Emirates Stadium but insisted after the match the tie was far from over. |
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MANAMA — Leading Formula One car manufacturers put pressure on Max Mosley to resign as president of the sport’s governing body on Thursday after a sex scandal involving the Briton. |
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Issues Archive