|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — A law allowing defendants to plea bargain for lighter sentences appears to have been applied for the first time in the high-profile case against fugitive cell phone tycoon Yevgeny Chichvarkin — much to the consternation of its co-author, Alexander Lebedev. “It’s like a scalpel,” former State Duma Deputy Lebedev wrote of the law on his blog Friday. “It can save people from death, but it can also kill them. I’m sorry, Yevgeny.” Investigators used the law, which was passed in June and designed to fight organized crime, to bolster their case against former Yevroset chief Chichvarkin, who is on the most-wanted lists of both the Russian police and Interpol on charges of kidnapping and extortion. Sergei Katorgin, one of eight Yevroset employees accused in what seems to be the Kremlin’s latest manhunt for a leading businessman, purportedly made a deal with investigators to supply evidence against Chichvarkin in exchange for having his sentence reduced by a third. |
|
INDIAN SUMMER
Mikhail Klimentyev / RIA-Novosti / AP
President Dmitry Medvedev and his Indian counterpart Pratibha Patil say goodbye after the Year of India in Russia party. Pratibha Patil visited St. Petersburg on Sunday. |
|
The local branch of the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB, has reopened the investigation into the assassination of the State Duma parliamentarian and outspoken leader of the Democratic Russia party, Galina Starovoitova, who was gunned down in the stairwell of her apartment building in St. Petersburg on Nov. 20, 1998. She died instantly, and her aide, Ruslan Linkov, who was with her at the time, suffered severe head injuries but survived the attack.
|
|
MOSCOW — G20 finance ministers broadly agreed Saturday that it was too early to begin unwinding massive economic support measures, concluding a two-day summit in London that bore little resemblance to the group’s stormy gathering there in April. World economic leaders have been meeting more frequently in the enlarged G20 format as an alternative to the Group of Eight, which critics say unfairly sidelines growing economic powers. |
|
MOSCOW — Jailed former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky said in an interview over the weekend that he expects to spend the rest of his life in prison. Khodorkovsky, who is serving an eight-year sentence for tax evasion, faces an additional 22 years in prison if convicted of embezzling all the oil that Yukos pumped from 1998 to 2003 — worth $27 billion — in a second trial that began in March. |
|
MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev submitted legislation to the State Duma on Friday that would bar a jury trial in the murder of reporter Anna Politkovskaya and other cases involving criminal groups. The legislation, which Medvedev first announced last month, would also increase prison sentences for people involved in criminal groups to life, up from the current maximum of 20 years. |
All photos from issue.
|
|
|
|
|
During the last 10 years the number of drug users in Russia has increased by 50 percent, reaching a total of 550,000, according to new statistics. Experts believe, however, that the real number of drug addicts in the country could amount to 2.5 million or two percent of the population, said Vladimir Vladimirov, head of the Administrative Department of the Federal Drug Control Service, speaking at a press conference held in St. |
|
MOSCOW — Amid high-profile smuggling cases involving a luxury yacht importer and Moscow’s Cherkizovsky Market, the Prosecutor General’s Office accused police and customs officials on Friday of failing to properly investigate smuggling cases and not punishing smugglers. |
|
MOSCOW — Prosecutors on Friday ordered the Communications and Press Ministry to reverse as unconstitutional a recent decree allowing law enforcement agencies to open private mail without a court order. The ministry, however, insisted that the decree, which has sparked outrage from human rights activists, is in line with the law and refused to amend it pending a ruling by the Supreme Court. |
|
MOSCOW — Mikhail Voitenko, the outspoken piracy expert who was the first to report about the disappearance of the Arctic Sea cargo ship, said Friday that he had been fired from his position as editor of Sovfracht Maritime Bulletin, media reports said. |
|
|
|
|
MOSCOW — A raft of economic figures released last week indicate that the economy may be bottoming out, but balance sheets filled with bad loans and a shortage of lending for the real economy may cause trouble down the road. The services sector expanded for the first time since the onslaught of the financial crisis last year, VTB Capital said last week in its Purchasing Managers’ Index. |
|
MOSCOW — Budget spending has been inefficient and uneven in the first half of the year, including for some key national initiatives, according to figures released by the Audit Chamber on Friday. |
 MOSCOW — Kaliningrad-based airline KD Avia will have its flight certificate annulled Sept. 14 and other carriers have already started picking up its passengers as they have seats available, the Federal Air Transportation Agency said Friday. The airline had operational losses of 2. |
|
The president of Stroimontage, one of St. Petersburg’s leading construction companies, appealed to Oleg Shigayev, president of Baltiisky Bank, in an open letter on Friday, asking him not to force the corporation into bankruptcy. |
|
Russians traveled abroad 22.6 percent less in the first half of the year, compared with the same period of 2008, Irina Tyurina, a spokeswoman for the Russian Tourism Industry Union, said Thursday. Trips to China showed the biggest drop, with 59 percent fewer Russians traveling there because of tougher customs procedures, she said. |
|
Burger King on Friday categorically denied a report that it had signed a franchising deal in Russia. While the fast food chain has been actively working to enter the Russian market for some time, no agreements have been concluded, Brian Johnston, Burger King’s senior director of development for Eastern Europe and emerging markets, told The St. |
|
Belarus Owes $200M MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller said Belarus owes about $200 million for supplies this year, Interfax reported. Gazprom received some payment in August for supplies and hopes the country will pay off the debt this year, Miller said at a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev, according to Interfax. |
Temp: -1°C clear 
Issues Archive