"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.
Shocked........(rolls eyes)
Who is incidentally the grandson of CPUSA's Earl Browder, with some interesting associations in his own right:
HIS GRANDFATHER was chairman of the U.S. Communist Party in the 1930s and early '40s until he was ousted for his "revisionist" thinking. Today William F. Browder, MBA '89, is revising some other thinking about Russia, making his mark in Moscow's nascent capitalist system. In April 1996, armed with $25 million from private investors, Browder formed the Hermitage Fund, called by Business Week "one of the best-performing offshore funds this year." The fund closed last summer after growing to $816 million. Browder is now working on Hermitage II, also aimed at investors who can stake more than $1 million each on stocks such as oil company Lukoil, phone company Rostelekom, and Sherbank, which now holds 75 percent of Russia's bank deposits.
Andrew Capon, "Seeing red: fund manager Bill Browder's anger at Russian companies' treatment of shareholders in spurring reforms. It's also making him rich.", Institutional Investor International Edition, Sept 2002 v27 i9 p65(4):
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So Browder called his chief financial backer and confidant, Edmond Safra, the legendary banker to the wealthy, who died in 1999. Safra's counsel: "If we want to fight this, we do it properly. We go to war." First, Browder hired bodyguards. Next, he talked to everyone he knew who had leverage with either Renaissance or Sidanco, including Safra's friend, hedge fund manager George Soros, a significant investor in Russia, and Sir John Browne, CEO of BP, which owned 10 percent of Sidanco.
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BROWDER DIDN'T GO TO RUSSIA EXPECTING TO become an agitator for good corporate governance. After graduating from business school in 1990, he was drawn to Eastern Europe by the fall of the Berlin Wall and by a curious family connection: His grandfather, Earl Browder, had been the leader of the U.S. Communist Party between 1932 and 1945 and had met his Russian wife while taking part in the fractious Communist International debates in Moscow in the 1920s. He died in 1974.
His son, Felix, Bill's father, became a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago. After graduate school, Bill worked briefly for the Boston Consulting Group, then for Robert Maxwell's Central and Eastern European Partnership before joining Salomon in 1994. There he once parlayed a $25 million investment in Russian privatization vouchers into $100 million in six months.
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Browder's emphasis on holding companies would pay off splendidly. Oligarchs like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, CEO of Yukos Oil, began a concerted campaign to gain full control of their company subsidiaries, with many riding roughshod over investors in these daughter assets. Today just 15 companies control more than 50 percent of Russian output.
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Erin E. Arvedlund, "An Investor and Gadfly in Russia.", The New York Times, March 14, 2004 pBU2 col 04:
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He says he honed his confrontational style with the help of another mentor, Edmond J. Safra, the multibillionaire founder of Republic National Bank in New York.
In vivid contrast to Mr. Browder's far-left forebear, Mr. Safra was the ubercapitalist who befriended him and bankrolled the Hermitage Fund, the hedge fund that Mr. Browder opened in 1996. It is now one of the largest hedge funds dedicated to Russia, with $1.4 billion in assets.
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In the 1990's, he picked a fight with an oligarch, Vladimir Potanin, over Sidanco, an oil company, concerning a share issue that would have diluted minority holdings. Russian securities officials canceled the disputed share issue, saving the Hermitage Fund alone $63 million.
''More or less everybody hates me,'' he said, rattling off a list of people and companies who have been targets of his shareholder battles, including Anatoly B. Chubais, chairman and chief executive of UES, the Russian electricity monopoly; Rem I. Vyakhirev, the former chairman of Gazprom, the Russian natural-gas monopoly; and the American accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. ''But I'm not here to be liked.''
Mr. Browder does not wage all his battles alone. His latest effort -- a lawsuit filed this month in a Siberian regional court against Surgutneftegas, Russia's fourth-largest oil company -- was filed jointly with Russia's Investor Protection Association and a large group of Surgutneftegas minority shareholders, including two other hedge funds, Prosperity Capital, based in Moscow, and the Firebird Fund, based in New York.
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''Under Putin, the political winds have shifted in favor of investors, even if only at the margins,'' said Ian Hague, a partner at the Firebird Fund.
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As for his personal politics, Mr. Browder says he is ''not a Communist'' like his grandfather. He's a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party in the United States. When he does argue politics with American relatives, he said, ''the one thing we all agree on is that we have to get rid of George Bush.''
Stil wondering what the word dhimmi (sp?) means. Thanks for the ping!!!
Sure looks like very rich criminals are getting richer by the minute.
Long ago, when Gazprom sold gas at the price of $20 on the border of the USSR and Ruhrgas distributed it in Germany at the price of $100 I thought "why people do such stupid business?"
Afterwards, when I found out that about 40 intermediate firms take participation between Gazprom and Ruhrgaz I realized that such a big variation in prices cutting up among many CEO, top managers, politicians etc. I know communists too much well so as to think another way.
Mr. Chernomyrdin created "Gazprom" and "Forbes" mag. consider him as multi-millionaire. When Chernomyrdin became prime minister of Russia in 1992, his permanent companion Rem Vyakhirev was head gas-company. Guess, who is Mr.Vyakhirev in the "Forbes" now?
Son of Mr.Vyakhirev became CEO of "Gasexport". When Mr.Vyakhirev was retired on a pension, his son found oneself under investigation (as though, after Putin's question "Where is money?"). Russian exported 157,2 bcm in 2004, 147,5 of them via Ukraine. I hope now you understand why Mr.Chernomyrdin became Russian ambassador in Ukraine. We heard permanent scandals how 'Ukraine steal gas'. May be so but where is money? There is not answer.
After orange revolution Mr.Yuschenko want transparency in gas-business. As we can see in result, intermediate RosUkrEnergo under control "Brainy Don" Semyon Mogilevich between Russia and Ukraina. In such case ma'am Timoshenko want transparency (perhaps Semyon is not from her men). I have weak hope, may be frau Merkel open investigation from German side…
Thanks for the ping.