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MOSCOW — A group of State Duma deputies on Friday proposed a major overhaul of the Customs Code aimed at simplifying the Byzantine process of importing goods into the country and stamping out corruption. Should the legislation be approved in the fall, authorized consignees such as customs carriers, brokers and warehouse owners will be able to clear goods at their own facilities, rather than the murky state customs warehouses. No provision, however, is made in the draft bill for the creation of a centralized electronic database, which exporters say is sorely needed to speed up clearance and root out corruption. The amendments, drafted after extensive input from more than 65 companies, will improve customs administration, risk control and the quality of post-auditing procedures, Valery Draganov, the Duma deputy leading the initiative, told reporters after presenting the legislation to the Duma’s council on customs and tariffs on Friday, the last day of the Duma’s spring session. |
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NICE SLICE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A chef from the Corinthia Nevskij Palace Hotel prepares to slice an U.S. Independence Day cake at the traditional celebratory event organized by the American Chamber of Commerce on Saturday. |
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Three men who where acquitted of plotting to assassinate Governor Valentina Matviyenko, one of who was under 21 at the time, are planning to sue St. Petersburg law enforcement agencies for at least 1 million rubles ($42.5 million) in damages. “My client was a juvenile who was forced to suspend his studies and spend a year behind bars instead,” said lawyer Maxim Gafarov, who represents Vladislav Baranov, the youngest of the wrongly accused men.
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A new cancer patient advocacy group that held its founding conference in St. Petersburg last month has launched a campaign against the restricted access to effective and innovative cancer treatment available in Russia. The Movement Against Cancer “was created with the aim of defending patients’ rights to access anti-cancer treatments, to campaign for an increase in the state budget covering the purchase of medicines, equipment and organization of public screenings,” said Anna Larionova, a cancer patient and the leader of the St. |
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Brits Feel Threatened MOSCOW (SPT) — British security services have identified Russia as the greatest threat to Britain after al-Qaida terrorism and Iranian nuclear proliferation, the Times of London reported Friday. |
All photos from issue.
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LINIYA STALINA, Belarus — Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said there would be no general clampdown on his opponents on Saturday after a bomb explosion wounded about 50 people at a concert he attended the day before. No one has claimed responsibility for the blast, the authorities have played it down, and Lukashenko, who was nearby but unhurt, said he did not see it as an assassination attempt. He also said the United States had offered technical help in investigating the explosion. Washington has criticized his government for human rights abuses and has been involved in a diplomatic spat with Minsk in recent months. |
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SHOWER POWER
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A boy plays in one of the trick fountains in the Lower Park in Peterhof, about 30 kilometers from St. Petersburg on Saturday. Certain stones trigger jets of water, splashing those in the vicinity. |
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MOSCOW — Georgian officials said there were five explosions near the de facto border between Georgia and its breakaway region of Abkhazia on Sunday, in the latest sign of growing tensions between Tbilisi and separatists. A series of incidents in the past week, involving bombs, mortar shelling and shootouts, have been matched by sharp condemnations from Moscow and Tbilisi, as both sides blame each other for thawing what had been frozen conflicts.
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MOSCOW — Pending hearings at Europe’s top human rights court into the 2002 hostage crisis at Moscow’s Dubrovka theater will be closed to the public at the request of Russian authorities. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has granted Russia’s request to hold the proceedings in the case, in which dozens of plaintiffs have accused Russia of violating their right to life, behind closed doors, a court spokeswoman said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — A married couple has been charged with the murder of a Norwegian man and his Russian wife in the southern city of Astrakhan, a top regional investigator said Friday. |
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A temporary residency permit under the counter without waiting for months in line costs from $4,500, and Russian citizenship can be obtained for the same figure. “I paid nine thousand dollars and I didn’t even stand in line for a single hour. You just go to the Federal Immigration Service office on Ligovsky Prospekt, give them your documents with the money, and they’ll hand over your new Russian passport after one week,” said a Ukrainian woman to her Tajik interlocutor. They were preparing to enter the packed hall of the Federal Immigration Service for St. Petersburg’s Primorsky district for another visit to OVIR — the district department of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. |
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 Red Fox Company, one of the Russian leaders in the production and sale of sports equipment, is to create a swimming pool network in St. Petersburg’s bedroom communities. |
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No Superjets This Year ZHUKOVSKY (Reuters) — Russian plane maker Sukhoi expects to make the first deliveries of its Superjet 100 aircraft no earlier than the third quarter of 2009, a source close to Sukhoi told Reuters on Monday. “The certification testing of the plane is expected to finish in the third quarter of 2009. |
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Flextronics International GmbH has exercised its right to terminate an agreement signed late February 2008 with Finland’s Elcoteq to purchase its subsidiary company and plant in St. |
 MOSCOW — Oleg Deripaska defended the Russian judiciary on Friday, saying he was “offended” by comments from a London High Court judge who ruled that possible dangers in Russia meant a $4 billion lawsuit against him could proceed in Britain. Justice Christopher Clarke said Thursday that Michael Cherney, a figure in 1990s privatizations of the Russian aluminum industry, could sue Deripaska in London because he made a “good arguable case” of the risks of holding the proceedings in Russia, such as “assassination, arrest on trumped-up charges, and lack of a fair trial. |
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MOSCOW — BP said Saturday that it was suing its partners in TNK-BP in London for 8.4 billion rubles ($365 million), money it believes should not have been paid out as back tax claims in Russia. |
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BRUSSELS — The European Union and Russia will set no deadline for agreeing on a wide-ranging partnership pact, negotiators said Friday, despite pressure from countries such as Germany for a quick deal. Speaking after the first negotiating round in Brussels, the two sides said they had agreed on what areas should be covered by the new pact, due to replace an agreement signed in 1997. But they left open how long the talks would take, and what structure any deal encompassing trade, energy cooperation, joint justice initiatives and cultural dialogue would have. “There is nothing more harmful for any negotiating process than a deadline,” Russia’s envoy to the EU, Vladimir Chizhov, said at a news conference with his EU counterpart, EU Commission external relations chief Eneko Landaburu. |
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 MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev wound up a three-state energy tour with talks in Kazakhstan on Saturday and Sunday, meeting with several regional leaders to consolidate his country’s monopoly on transiting Central Asian gas. |
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MOSCOW — Amid a worldwide banking crunch, Russian bankers and their counterparts abroad view liquidity shortage as their biggest risk, according to a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. But the similarities stop there, with the Russians ranking other main risks differently from the rest of the world. |
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The new 67-meter tall building of the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange seems to be jinxed. In the middle of June, just before it opened, the city’s town-planning council slammed the project for spoiling one of the best views in the city. Its height is 63.4 meters, in line with an agreement made with City Hall in 2002, while the latest legislation limits construction in this part of the city to a height of 48 meters. The town-planning council is known for its critical remarks on modern art, but has never before discussed a building that has already been built. Furthermore, its rulings have no legal power and are more like recommendations. For instance, it did not approve the project for the 396-meter tall Gazprom Tower, but it did not make any difference. |
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 Investor sentiment was rather mixed as we entered 2008. Bullish hopes lingered in developed markets, based on the naive assumption that 2007 credit woes would magically evaporate on New Year’s Day, and emerging markets danced to the dream of decoupling. |
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It is often argued that Russia should quote its oil price in rubles because it would reduce oil companies’ volatility of revenues and thus facilitate investment planning. Perhaps it would also strengthen the ruble exchange rate and promote its status as an international transaction currency. This is a misconception. |
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Some countries have better reputations than they deserve. The Netherlands, for example, emerged from World War II with a nobler image than they warranted. In Poland, however, just the opposite held true. Russia today also seems to be a place whose image is worse than the reality. Part of the problem, as always in Russia, is the weight of the past. The country can’t seem to shake off the legacy of its brutality and injustice in the 19th and 20th centuries, which can be summed up in two words — pogrom and Gulag. And so it didn’t help that Vladimir Putin’s presidency was littered with corpses in Shakespearean profusion. Spin and hype can’t do much for that. |
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 John McCain would kick Russia out of the Group of Eight economic powers, but this is no time to think small. The G8 leaders themselves should declare surrender and disband their high-profile huddle on the state of the world. |
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Eight employees at a Chelyabinsk region prison have been arrested in connection with a riot at the institution in May that ultimately led to the deaths of four inmates. The employees, whose arrests were authorized by a local court, were on duty when the riot broke out at Prison No. 1 in the city of Kopeisk on May 31, regional Investigative Committee official Yelena Kalinina said last week, Interfax reported. |
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 KABUL — A Taliban suicide car bomb hit the Indian Embassy in Kabul on Monday, killing 41 people and wounding 141, in an attack Afghan authorities said was coordinated with foreign agents in the region, a likely reference to Pakistan. Afghanistan has accused Pakistani agents of being behind a number of attacks in recent weeks and Afghan President Hamid Karzai last month threatened to send troops across the border to attack militants there if Pakistan does not take action. |
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NEW YORK — Pop star Madonna denied having an affair with Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez and said in a statement to People magazine on Sunday she is not planning to get divorced from her British husband Guy Ritchie. |
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 SILVERSTONE, England — McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton blew away his rivals to win a wet and chaotic British Grand Prix on Sunday and storm back to the top of the Formula One standings. Hamilton, the first British winner at Silverstone since David Coulthard in 2000, was utterly dominant as he lapped all but second-placed Nick Heidfeld in a BMW Sauber and the Honda of Brazilian Rubens Barrichello. The 23-year-old’s third win of the season put him level on 48 points with Ferrari’s Brazilian Felipe Massa, who was 13th and last after spinning five times on the sodden track, and world champion Kimi Raikkonen. |
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TILL DEATH US DO PART
/ Reuters
Estonia’s Alan Voogla carries his wife Kristi Viltrop on their way to winning the Wife-Carrying World Championships in Sonkajarvi, central Finland, on Saturday. |
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KIEV — Ukraine has three months to prove its preparations for hosting the 2012 European championship with Poland are on track, UEFA president Michel Platini said on Thursday, adding he felt confident of their success. Platini said last weekend that Poland and Ukraine risked losing the right to host the tournament if stadiums in their capitals were not ready.
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Issues Archive