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MOSCOW — Police have arrested a 28-year-old suspect on suspicion of stealing $41 million from the federal pension fund in an elaborate scheme that involved Cyprus bank accounts, 23 cell phone numbers and a travel regime that avoided the use of trains and planes. The suspect, Kirill Ustinov, was detained early Thursday in Ryazan, a city some 250 kilometers southeast of Moscow, the Interior Ministry said in a statement on its web site. Investigators believe that Ustinov used counterfeit documents and a forged passport to wire 1.25 billion rubles of pension fund money kept in Central Bank accounts to a fictitious company called SpetsTekhProm last November. |
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MADE IN BRITAIN
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Guests at a garden party in the grounds of the British Consulate in St. Petersburg on Thursday relish the chance to get their hands on a classic British car, the Mini. The event, despite rainfall, focused on a range of British products. For more see Photopage. |
 MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev dispatched Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to Dagestan on Sunday after the North Caucasus republic was rocked by a series of attacks that killed at least three people and injured dozens, including a local government minister. Serdyukov arrived in the local capital, Makhachkala, on Sunday afternoon to personally oversee efforts to aid the victims, Interfax reported.
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MOSCOW — Three senior Volgograd regional officials resigned Monday over their handling of wildfires after coming under criticism from the Kremlin. Igor Pikalov, a deputy governor who headed Volgograd’s emergency situations commission, filed his resignation along with heads of the worst-affected Kotovo and Rudnya districts, Alexander Kazachkov and Viktor Morozov, the Kremlin said in a statement. |
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MOSCOW — Yulia Kruglova, a pregnant mother of four young children, was released Friday after the Samara Regional Court postponed her prison sentence on embezzlement charges until 2022 — when her youngest daughter will turn 14. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW — A senior European lawmaker harshly criticized Russia’s human rights record and said the country would be better off without Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Heidi Hautala, head of the European Parliament parliament’s subcommittee on human rights, told Ekho Moskvy radio on Friday that the living conditions of Russian prisoners amounted to a “catastrophe” and said the legal onslaught against former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was “politically fabricated.” Hautala, wrapping up a visit that included a stop by a banned opposition rally near Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Ploshchad on Aug. 31, said she was “shocked” that Putin had made a “direct call” for the police to use violence against peaceful demonstrators who take part in regular unsanctioned rallies at the end of every month with 31 days. |
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Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
On Monday, St. Petersburg celebrated the 19th anniversary of the return of its original name, having been named Leningrad under the Soviets. Arrivals at the city’s ferry port, however, are still met by a Leningrad sign, as pictured above. |
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MOSCOW — A Moscow court has rejected a defamation lawsuit filed by Nashi against opposition leader Ilya Yashin over his accusations that the pro-Kremlin youth group had made Internet videos targeting opposition politicians and journalists. The Tverskoi District Court ruled that Yashin, a leader of the Solidarity opposition group, did not need to retract the accusations he made in a March 18 interview with the Vremya Novostei newspaper, Yashin wrote on his blog Friday.
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NIZHNY NOVGOROD — Russian Railway’s Sapsan train will now run twice daily between Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow, the company said in a statement Monday, adding seats to a route that has become popular since its launch in late July. The Sapsan — or peregrine falcon in Russian — began traveling between Moscow and St. |
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Alcoholism, Inflation MOSCOW (SPT) — Alcoholism and inflation scare Russians much more than terrorism and extremism, according to a new poll. |
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MOSCOW — Human rights veteran Lyudmila Alexeyeva said Thursday that she would stop attending opposition rallies because of her age and poor health, as Washington criticized a police crackdown on a rally near Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Ploshchad last week. “I’ve had my share of going to rallies in my life. |
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MOSCOW — Senior Moscow official Oleg Mitvol has asked the pro-Kremlin Nashi youth group to vacate its headquarters in a building meant to house a kindergarten, in what analysts called a sign that Nashi was losing its clout. |
 In the evening on July 2, 2012, Berlin’s two airports, Tegel and Schoenefeld, will simultaneously close, marking the start of a swift “Two Become One” operation that will see the opening of what aims to be one of Europe’s busiest transport hubs. Over the course of the following night, all portable and mobile equipment and machinery will be transferred to the new facility – the Berlin Brandenburg International Airport – at a dramatic pace. |
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 The sound of soldiers marching on Red Square in Moscow could be heard all weekend as the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival started up in force. |
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The warming properties of aged whiskies and fine English tea were perhaps even more appreciated than their famed tastes on Thursday, when the British Consulate-General in St. Petersburg hosted a garden party promoting fashionable British brands. When the event started at 6 p.m under pouring rain and in a piercing wind, some guests shook their heads sceptically looking at a rapidly deteriorating red carpet that had been prepared for a Vivienne Westwood fashion show. |
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MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday abruptly extended the grain export ban by at least several months from the end of this year because farmers and wholesalers sent grain prices up by holding the latest harvest. Putin’s decision, made at a regular session of the Presidium, the downsized Cabinet, threatens to further undermine Russia’s hard-won status as the world’s third-largest grain exporter. But Putin appeared intent on stabilizing the domestic grain market, still reeling from the worst drought in decades despite an export embargo from Aug. 15. “We are seeing that grain is being held in anticipation of the next steps,” Putin said, adding that the government would not consider removing the export ban until after the collection of next year’s harvest. |
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LOCAL HERO
David Gray / Reuters
Former Olympic figure skating champion Yevgeny Plushenko smiles during a press conference in Beijing on Friday. Plushenko said he remains determined to compete at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. |
 MOSCOW — Rosneft’s board has approved first deputy chief Eduard Khudainatov as its new president, the company said Sunday, ending Sergei Bogdanchikov’s 12 years at the helm and tightening chairman Igor Sechin’s control over Russia’s largest oil producer. During his tenure, Bogdanchikov turned Rosneft into the industry leader — in large part through the acquisition of assets from the now-bankrupt Yukos.
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Pilgrim’s Pride MOSCOW (SPT) — JBS said its Pilgrim’s Pride subsidiary will resume poultry exports to Russia starting Saturday, Bloomberg. Four of the company’s U.S. plants were approved for export to Russia, JBS said in a regulatory filing. |
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MOSCOW — Russians are once again turning to mortgages to purchase homes, borrowing an impressive 155.3 billion rubles ($5.04 billion) in the first half of 2010 — the vast majority of it in the national currency. |
 MOSCOW — Analysts at the Justice Ministry have reviewed official statistics and concluded that there has been no improvement in the battle against corruption. The actual number of corrupt officials exposed and punished has not increased over the last three years, though the topic is much more frequently in the news. |
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MOSCOW — Evraz Group expects that core profit will have slipped in the third quarter, despite improving Russian demand, because of volatile prices and concerns about a sustainable economic recovery, the company said Thursday, Bloomberg reported. |
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 Three weeks ago, NTV television reported that more than 70 engineers working at a Komsomolsk-on-Amur airplane factory in the Khabarovsk region had obtained fake engineering degrees from a local technical college. The high-security military plant, which belongs to state-owned Sukhoi, assembles the Su-27, Su-30 and Su-35 fighter jets, as well as the much-anticipated Superjet 100 passenger plane. |
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George Orwell’s anti-utopian novel “1984” enjoyed a revival during the presidency of George W. Bush. Even though Orwell’s totalitarian future is now more than a quarter-century out of date, the book read like a collection of newspaper headlines. |
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 TALLINN — On Aug. 20, Edgar Savisaar, the Mayor of Tallinn and once a member of the pro-independence Public Front, proclaimed the city European Capital of Culture 2011, speaking from the open stage on Vabaduse valjak —Freedom Square — in Tallinn. The date was celebrated as the Day of Restoration of Independence, and LED screens were showing video footage from 1991, with Soviet tanks rolling on the city’s streets in Moscow’s failed attempt to crackdown on the Baltic States, which were seeking independence, and with Estonian politicians appealing directly to the people after re-declaring their country’s independence. |
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 GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemalan rescue teams searched for survivors Monday after landslides caused by heavy rains killed at least 38 people around the country and left nearly two dozen others missing. President Alvaro Colom declared a “national tragedy” as fears grew the eventual toll from scores of landslides across the country set off by weeks of torrential rain could be far higher. |
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MADRID — Spain’s government Monday rejected a ceasefire by Basque fighters ETA as totally inadequate and demanded it renounce guns and bombs forever in its battle for an independent homeland. |
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SINGAPORE — Three blind golfers will test their skills this week against Asian Tour professionals during the inaugural Handa Singapore Classic in a drive to encourage more people with disabilities to tee-off. Australian David Blyth, England’s Neil Baxter and Yam Ting Woo of Malaysia will play a three-hole challenge, each paired with a professional who will be blind-folded. |
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — At least 19 people were killed and 45 wounded when a suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden car into a police station in northwest Pakistan on Monday, destroying the building, police said. |
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Issues Archive