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"Bill Browder, president of Hermitage Capital, a big Gazprom minority shareholder, said: "There is no economic reason to justify the existence of this company. It earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year of profit, but why would Gazprom, a monopoly supplier, want to give away this money to a faceless company when it could perfectly well handle this business on its own?"

"Ukrainian Security Service chairman Oleksandr Turchynov said publicly earlier this year that he believes Ukrainian-born mafia boss Semyon Mogilevich, known as "the Brainy Don", controls the company. A former member of President Leonid Kuchma's administration, Mogilevich is wanted by America's FBI and Interpol on money-laundering charges. He lives openly in Moscow, and Russia refuses to extradite him." - LINK

"As Wolfgang Putschek said quoted by Reuters “a group of international investors who still prefer to stay unidentified” is behind Raiffeisen Invest AG, another owner of RUE. It reminds one of Vladimir Putin’s declaration made a year ago that a group of “experienced energy specialists” is behind the Baikal Finans Group company which bought Yuganskneftegaz at the Federal Property Management Fund’s auction." - LINK

HUNT FOR THE RED DON - 09/04/1999 - Benex is alleged to have been used by Mogilevich and other Russian gangsters to move large sums from Russia to Britain. Investigators claim that in the six months to March this year, about $4.2 billion, in more than 10,000 transactions, passed through one account. In New York, the bank suspended Natasha Kagalovsky, another senior official involved in its eastern European business. Her husband, Konstantine, also Russian, had recently worked at the International Monetary Fund, fuelling speculation that some of the laundered cash may have originated from IMF grants to Russia.