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MOSCOW - Audit Chamber chief Ser gei Stepashin turned up the heat on embattled Railways Minister Nikolai Ak syonenko this week, fueling speculation that the Yeltsin-era insider's career is over and a wider war on corruption is under way. Stepashin said an audit by the chamber, the State Duma's budget watchdog, uncovered some $370 million worth of "misappropriations" and "inefficient use of funds" - diplomatic speak for embezzlement - by Aksyonenko's ministry last year alone. |
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Some Leningrad Oblast officials have charged that Governor Vladimir Ya kov lev is interfering in regional politics by backing a slate of candidates for the Leningrad Oblast Legislative Assembly elections, which will be held on Dec. |
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Hungry Mirilashvili ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - A local businessperson charged with murder declared a hunger strike Thurs day, Interfax reported. Mikhail Mirilashvili, head of the board of directors of the Conti group of casinos and the Petromir holding, "fully intends to fast until two conditions are fulfilled," said his lawyer, Yury Novolodsky, on Thursday. |
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MOSCOW - Two weeks after President Vladimir Putin abolished the Nationalities and Migration Ministry and passed some of its functions to the Interior Ministry, hundreds of thousands of refugees and millions of migrants are in limbo, as officials admit little preparation had been made for the reshuffle. |
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MOSCOW - Those who have struggled through the arduous visa application process in the past may find it hard to believe, but the U.S. Embassy is now being even "more vigilant" in its review of Russian applicants for non-immigrant visas, especially students, reported Consul General James Warlick. |
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MOSCOW - Patriarch Alexy II this week expressed a mixture of disappointment and understanding toward the New York-based emigre branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, which in recent days elected a new, moderate leader, but responded sternly to the Moscow Patriarchate's call for unity. |
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Raduyev in Court MOSCOW (Reuters) - The most prominent Chechen rebel commander captured by Russia in the latest war in Chechnya goes on trial in the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan next week, a court spokesperson said Thursday. Salman Ra du yev earned notoriety by leading several bloody hostage-taking raids from Chech nya. |
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MOSCOW - Essentially sealing a long-awaited transaction, Golden Telecom announced Tuesday it had signed a memorandum of understanding to obtain full ownership of leading alternative operator Sovintel from national long-distance provider Rostelecom. Under the memorandum, Golden Telecom, Russia's leading Internet provider, will pay $52 million in cash and 15 percent of its own stock for Rostelecom's 50-percent Sovintel stake. The deal was valued at around $105 million. The acquisition will bring loss-making Golden closer to the black, while allowing the company to more aggressively build Sovintel's business, analysts said. Golden Telecom officials said its revenues would nearly double as a result of full ownership, although they added that they expected to break even in 2002 even without it. |
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 MOSCOW - The state used to put limits on Khamzat Khasbulatov's meat. As a restaurant manager in the planned economy of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, it wasn't up to him how many kilograms of beef he could cook up each week. |
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The Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast announced on Thursday that a suit to initiate bankruptcy procedings against the Inter-Hotel Petrograd joint venture, the company that is the legal owner of the yet-to-be-completed Northern Crown Hotel, had been withdrawn. |
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MOSCOW - Gazprom moved to rein in Sibur this week, saying it would retain its majority stake in the insolent petrochemical subsidiary and take control of its board. |
 MOSCOW - Canadian construction companies and their local partners are hoping to lure 10,000 middle-class families out of city apartments and into new suburban town-house developments over the next few years, according to a Canadian Embassy official. The draw will be Canadian-style, wood-frame town houses, 10,000 of which are on track to go up on the outskirts of regional centers across Russia by 2005, said Valery Makarov, commercial officer at the Canadian Embassy. |
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CALL it the 9-11 aftershock. The Bush administration, switching to war footing, is treating the deepening economic crisis as a second casualty of the Sept. 11 attacks. President George W. Bush rushed through a $15-billion bailout to the airlines, promptly proposed ways the government would help shoulder insurers' losses from future terrorist attacks and quickly began promoting a $75-billion pump-priming package. |
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LAST week the media reported that the Press Ministry was among those state bodies whose activities had attracted the attention of the Audit Chamber and the Prosecutor General's Office. |
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LAST week a meeting of the World Economic Forum took place in Moscow. Representatives of international banking circles descended on the Russian capital to discuss the indisputable achievements of the past three years. In fact, since the 1998 financial crisis, we have started to see economic growth, the standard of living rising somewhat and the middle class - comprising a little more than one-tenth of the population - once again starting to spend money. |
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SINCE President Vladimir Pu tin was inaugurated in May 2000, many of his moves have had observers wondering aloud about the careful strategic planning that must have preceded them. |
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 Producing the portrait of an epoch is a challenging and thankless task, one that not every artist would even think of attempting. Most of the rare attempts are notably unsuccessful, such as Ilya Glazunov's kitschy and chaotic "Eternal Russia: Images of Russian History" or "The Market of Our Democracy. |
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Be sure to catch the last day of the Deboshir Independent Film Festival - Pure Daydreams 4, on Friday. That night director/actor Alexander Bashirov's festival of independent and low-budget films will close with a performance by ska-punk combo Leningrad. |
 Every once in a while, it is fun to choose one of the city's "transition" neighborhoods and just wander around. I mean those pockets of the city where the winds of post-Soviet change are just beginning to blow and where Soviet style produkty stores ("V kassu!") rub elbows incoherently with shimmering boutiques and glistening hypermarkets. |
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More ETA Attacks MADRID (Reuters) - A judge was shot dead on Wednesday in Spain's Basque region less than 24 hours after police said they had seized two members of an ETA cell blamed for a spate of recent attacks in Madrid, including a car bomb on Tuesday. |
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Ivanisevic Will Play SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) - Goran Ivanisevic, who battled past a shoulder injury to win Wimbledon, will play in the season-ending Tennis Masters Cup despite a freak accident in the shower. |
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