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MOSCOW - Most provisions of the new Criminal Procedural Code kicked into effect Monday - with supporters praising it for enhancing the rights of suspects, critics warning that practice will fall short of theory, and prosecutors and courts scrambling to deal with their enormous new workload. The code was a cornerstone of the Kremlin-backed judicial reform package pushed through the State Duma last fall and purports to give greater power to the courts and to level the playing field for defense lawyers, who have often found themselves outdone by disproportionately powerful prosecutors. Under the new law, the courts - not prosecutors - must sanction searches, arrests and detention for longer than 48 hours. |
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 MOSCOW - In contrast to the economic legislation passed in the State Duma's spring session, the political and social legislation gave deputies less reason to crow as they wrapped up their work for the summer Monday. |
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A cryptic new party with a vague grassroots platform and the blessing of the country's No. 3 politician was formed over the weekend, fueling speculation as to who was behind it and whose political tool it would be in the 2003-2004 election season. Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov welcomed more than 200 delegates to the founding congress of the Party of Life held in Moscow on Saturday - with new members ranging from the Million Friends party, who describe their central focus as the love of animals, to representatives of Mironov's Will of Petersburg movement. |
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2001 was a successful year for AmCham St. Petersburg member-companies operating in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast. Many companies, who invested millions of dollars into construction of factories and plants in Russia, have reached, and in some cases surpassed, their planned production capacity. |
All photos from issue.
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MOSCOW - The final report into Russia's August 2000 Kursk submarine disaster said on Monday a torpedo fuel leak caused the massive explosion which sank the nuclear-powered vessel with the loss of all 118 crew. Ilya Klebanov, the senior government minister who headed the commission that compiled the report, said investigators had made their findings after key elements from the torpedo bay were raised from the bottom of the Barents Sea last month. |
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MOSCOW -The new Administrative Violations Code, which spells out a wide range of noncriminal offenses and their penalties, came into force Monday. The code imposes or increases fines for offenses such as traffic violations, prostitution, bootlegging, swearing in public or failing to carry a passport. |
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Senate Election Bill MOSCOW (SPT) - Yabloko has introduced a bill to the State Duma that would provide for direct elections of members to the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament. A spokesperson for the liberal party said on Monday that the bill allows for the gradual replacement of existing Federation Council members, who are currently appointed. |
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 MOSCOW - In a flurry of final readings, the State Duma on Monday wrapped up a spring session whose economic highlights included the approval of farmland sales, a new bankruptcy law and much-needed small business reform. President Vladimir Putin met with leading lawmakers shortly after the Duma recessed at 2 p. |
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MOSCOW - The number of Russian small businesses is rising and could soon reach West European levels, according to a new report to be released Tuesday. Earlier data from the State Statistics Committee, indicating that small businesses were on the decline, is incorrect, said the report, authored by the European Commission, the Russian Anti-Monopoly Ministry and TACIS, the European Union's technical assistance program to the Commonwealth of Independent States. |
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MOSCOW - With the euro surging to two-year highs against the U.S. dollar, the ruble and Central Bank reserves are sliding in value, and some panicky Russians are switching to the euro. On the back of scandals swirling around U.S. giants WorldCom and Xerox Corp., the euro peaked at 0.999 to the dollar on Friday, its highest level against the U.S. currency since February 2000. A handful of banks, anticipating a further strengthening of the euro, started selling euros last week at rates equal to or higher than the dollar. "The demand for euros has increased dramatically over the past several days," said a cashier at the EnergoSberBank currency exchange office, which has one of the highest rates for euros in Moscow, according to business-information service RosBusinessConsulting. |
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 KONAKOVO, Tver Region - Minority UES shareholders increased their number of board seats from one to two at the power monopoly's annual shareholders meeting Friday, a move that analysts said boded well for the company's looming reform. |
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THE restructuring of the natural monopolies, such as Gazprom, is without doubt one of the key items on the government's structural-reform agenda. While reform of the banking system is also widely recognized as a crucial task, any revision of the role of the state-controlled savings bank Sberbank - an "unnatural monopoly" in the banking sector - is often seen as being of secondary importance at best. |
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THE lurid 2002 portrait of the U.S. economy as a bunch of Enrons and Tycos, overpaid CEOs running corporations like casinos, electronic speculators, predatory hedge funds, fraudulent stock values, deceptive investment firms and collusive accountants didn't develop overnight. |
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TWO weeks ago, Meshchansky district court handed down to Anatoly Bykov, the former head of Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant, or KrAZ, a 6 1/2-year suspended sentence for plotting the murder of his former business associate, Vilor Struganov. Bykov's star started to rise in 1993 when Krasnoyarsk's organized crime bosses, with names like Lyapa, Tolmach and Siniy, started dropping like flies. |
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A MILITARY court last week acquitted six officers accused of the murder of journalist Dmitry Kholodov. This fact in itself was exceptional, because Russian courts rarely acquit anyone at all. Rare is the Russian who truly believes in the judicial system. |
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THE long-awaited coming into force on Monday of two documents - the new Criminal Procedure Code and the new Administrative Violations Code - is being touted by the Russian government as a major step toward turning the country into one governed by law, or, if you prefer, into President Putin's much-cited "dictatorship of law. |
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"Their relatives carried them back from a field the soldiers had occupied at the edge of the village: a man whose eye was gouged out; another whose fingers were cut off; a third whose back had been sliced in rows with the sharp edge of broken glass, then doused with alcohol and set afire. |
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Jungle Fever "War." A potent, pliable word. Under the rubric of "war" - which implies dire emergency, imminent threat, the abandonment of normal life and the normal rule of law - there is no limit to the moral erosion that can occur. |
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SEOUL - South Korea and the United States agreed on Monday to increase military surveillance of North Korea and strengthen rules of engagement after Saturday's bloody naval clash between the two Koreas, the South's defense ministry said. The shootout in the Yellow Sea on Saturday reflects North Korea's irritation with a border set by the United Nations almost half a century ago that prevents the North's ships from entering valuable fishing waters. |
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Foreigners Come Here! MOSCOW (Reuters) - Nearly 80 percent of Russians want a foreign coach to run the national soccer team after the country's poor showing at the World Cup. |
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