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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday told Renault to either help its partner, struggling carmaker AvtoVAZ, or risk the dilution of its 25 percent stake. Putin said the government had protected Renault’s interest in the company this summer, when it gave AvtoVAZ 25 billion rubles ($829 million) in financing. |
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MOSCOW — Anatoly Chubais, the former CEO of Unified Energy System, tops a list of six officials accused of neglect and making bad decisions in a much-anticipated report on the cause of the August dam disaster that killed 75 people. |
 Defenders of the public garden at Komendantsky Prospekt 40, where the construction company Severny Gorod plans to build a 12-story residential building, had another serious conflict with the security guards in charge of guarding the construction site on Monday. “This morning about 40 security guards tried again to drive out local residents from our public garden, but they failed to do so,” said Yelena Gavrilova, a resident of the neighborhood. |
All photos from issue.
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Mayor Yury Luzhkov and his wife, Yelena Baturina, said Friday that they were suing opposition politician Boris Nemtsov for claiming that the success of Baturina’s real estate development company Inteko was directly linked to her marriage to Luzhkov. Nemtsov released a report titled “Luzhkov, Conclusions” on Sept. 8 that criticizes the mayor for failing to handle problems like crime, traffic, corruption and pollution in Moscow. The biggest section, however, is dedicated to exploring the relationship between Baturina’s success in Inteko and the Moscow city government. Baturina, who is ranked by Forbes magazine as Russia’s richest woman with a fortune of $900 million, has filed a defamation lawsuit in the Moscow Arbitration Court for 200,000 rubles ($6,630) based on a calculation of 1 ruble for each copy of the report that was published, Inteko said in a statement. |
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ART EXCHANGE
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Visitors examine the work on display at the opening ceremony of the “Russian Finland and Finnish Russia” exhibition that opens Tuesday and runs through Oct. 25 at the Museum of Religion. |
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Igor Golembiovsky, a former editor of the Izvestia and Noviye Izvestia dailies who led a push toward editorial independence for journalists in the early 1990s, died Friday in Moscow. He was 74. Golembiovsky suffered a serious stroke several years ago. His wife, Anna, announced his death to Interfax. President Dmitry Medvedev extended his condolences to Golembiovsky’s relatives, the Kremlin said in a statement.
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City Hall has effectively banned the planned March for the Protection of St. Petersburg, organized to protest the local authorities’ decision to approve the Okhta Center’s planned 400-meter skyscraper, or Gazprom Tower. The march’s organizers said it was too late to change the previously announced meeting point in front of Yubileiny Sports Palace and the time (noon on Saturday. |
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The construction company Alice has put the Dostoevsky Hotel in the center of St. Petersburg up for sale. The developer hopes to fetch 50 million euros for the hotel, which is located in the Vladimirsky Passazh retail complex, said Alexander Pavlov, the company’s managing director. Alice, which owns Vladimirsky Passazh, has presented its proposal to several investment funds. The three-star Dostoevsky Hotel, which opened in 2003, has 207 rooms occupying an area of more than 8,950 square meters, according to the company’s press office. In 2003, investment in the project amounted to an estimated eight to nine million dollars. The hotel is not one of Alice’s core assets, but the money raised from it wouldn’t hurt right now either, Pavlov said, explaining his company’s decision to sell the hotel. |
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 The number of tourist groups visiting St. Petersburg decreased by 15 to 25 percent this year. Cruise tourism has suffered the least during the economic crisis. |
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In 2010, St. Petersburg could put up for auction buildings including Gostiny Dvor and the Nikolsky and Krugly markets. A fortnight ago, City Hall gave the green light to a privatization program of six historic buildings in 2010. More buildings will appear on the list, said Deputy Governor Yury Molchanov. |
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Sheremetyevo for Sale MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s government plans to sell a stake in Sheremetyevo International Airport, the country’s second busiest, to help finance its budget deficit, said Roman Genis, a spokesman for the company. |
 MOSCOW — Transportation prosecutors are threatening to close bars and restaurants in Moscow airports that continue to serve hard alcohol, expanding the use of a law that bans the sale of liquor in crowded and dangerous places. Since early September, prosecutors have been making frequent visits to restaurants and bars in the city’s airports, officials from a major alcohol producer and an international vodka company said. |
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A U.S. branch of what was once Russia’s biggest oil company is planning to collect $100 billion in damages at the Strasbourg court from the Russian government’s bankruptcy of Yukos. |
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MOSCOW — Magna International, the lead investor in a group buying General Motors’ Opel unit, was accused of plans to move van production to Russia from its British factory, by Unite, a trade union at Opel’s Vauxhall division, the Financial Times reported Friday. “This is a stitch-up,” said Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of Unite, the newspaper reported. “We could see vans go to GAZ.” Woodley told the newspaper that Magna had given no guarantee that the Luton plant would produce vans after 2013, when a production joint venture with Renault expires. Production may go to Oleg Deripaska’s GAZ Group, the newspaper said. Magna denied the plans to the newspaper, saying, “No movement of production facilities to Russia is envisioned under the business plan and workers at Luton are in no worse a position than they were under GM, which had made no commitment beyond 2013,” the newspaper reported. |
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 The government has established a schedule for banning incandescent lights, starting with 100-watt bulbs in 2011, and officials are promising to start buying only energy-efficient lamps. |
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State media holding VGTRK wants to attract active young viewers and will use its Sport channel as the basis for a new station starting next year, provisionally called Rossia-2. In the six years that Sport has been on-air, strong competition from paid, specialized sports channels has driven up the prices by several times for broadcasting rights to athletic events, said Anton Zlatopolsky, chief executive of VGTRK’s Rossia channel. |
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The government, seeking to plug holes in the federal and regional budgets, has submitted a bill to lawmakers that would triple the excise tax on beer next year and double a transportation tax. |
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The markets started October in dramatic fashion, as worse-than-expected U.S. economic numbers and falling oil prices put the brakes on the five-month rally. Market watchers, however, said a sell-off this month could present a perfect jumping-off point for investors looking to capitalize on the world’s best-performing equity market. |
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 Thursday’s Geneva meeting of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany regarding Iran’s nuclear program did not lead to a breakthrough or a decisive showdown. It did, however, demonstrate more unity among the major powers vis-a-vis Tehran, and we witnessed the first meeting of President Barack Obama’s administration between U. |
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Former U.S. President George W. Bush did Barack Obama one favor. Bush’s plans to counter the Iranian missile threat with a radar installation in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptors in Poland bequeathed his successor a bargaining chip. |
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 This month, GQ magazine picked Dasha Zhukova, girlfriend of Roman Abramovich and founder of the Garage gallery, as its woman of the year. She won the laurels as part of the magazine’s incredibly sexist People of the Year awards, which are otherwise only given out to men. Zhukova gets a four-page spread, almost as long as the one with the Italian model in black underwear. |
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