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MOSCOW (Mineweb.com) -- The plot to steal a billion-dollar manganese plant in Ukraine, allegations of which surfaced in a US court filing late last month, now threatens a billion-dollar Italian bank takover, according to letters of warning issued by Italian lawyers in Milan. On March 30, a group of shareholders associated with Ukrainian steelmaker and financier, Igor Kolomoisky, filed suit under the US racketeering statute, accusing a group of Ukrainian and Russian defendants of corruptly gaining control of the Nikopol Ferro-Alloy Plant of the Ukraine. Nikopol is one of the world’s largest producers of the steel-hardening manganese alloy. The lawsuit...

MOSCOW (Mineweb.com) -- Steelmaking requires manganese alloy to harden the product. It is thus natural that if the price of the steel is rocketing upwards, the price of manganese ore, and especially ferromanganese in its high-carbon form, will go ballistic. During last year's steel boom, for example, the price of ferromanganese, landed in Hong Kong, nearly doubled from $580 per metric ton in January 2004 to a peak of $1,070 in October. That was a lucrative opportunity for the world's largest holders of manganese ore reserves -- South Africa and Ukraine. Current estimates indicate that of the 5 million tons...

Another alleged poisoning is rocking Ukraine on Thursday: Politician and businessman Igor Pluzhnikov died after the onset of a mysterious illness. Pluzhnikov, the majority owner of the nation's main TV channel, Inter, was well connected to "The Group of Seven," a circle of influential Ukrainian businessmen. He was also key in the opposition Social Democratic Party that supported the losing candidate in last year's presidential elections. Reports speculate that Pluzhnikov may have been strong-armed into selling his Inter stake, so buyers could make the channel more regime-friendly. Not much more is known about the share sale. But by mid-June, Pluzhnikov...

"Round table" with the assistance of the founder of International Renaissance Foundation George Soros and the people’s deputy of Ukraine, Victor Pinchuk, takes place today in Kiev. In the course of the "round table" the participants are discussing the possibility of formation of the service charged with providing the citizens of Ukraine with free legal assistance. The questions concerning the state of legal assistance in Ukraine, legal basis of realization of human rights on access to justice, formation of free service charged with legal assistance to poor sections of the population will be also discussed.

IEV, Ukraine - Hundreds of workers lined up outside a major steel factory amid barbed wire and police barricades Thursday as tensions spiked in a dispute involving dueling shareholders in the lucrative factory, which the government alleges was improperly privatized. Officials from Interpipe Corp. - Ukraine's largest steel corporation and owner of the Nikopol Ferroalloy plant - charged that a government agency and an allied bank was trying to take over factory in Nikopol. Neither officials at the state-run State Property Fund nor officials with the Kiev-based Privat Bank, a minority shareholder in the factory, could be reached for comment...

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko says her government plans to review some 3,000 privatizations to ensure they were conducted fairly. The Interfax news agency quotes her as saying Wednesday that the state will get back what was illegally handed over to what she called "private but dishonest hands." She has already ordered authorities to begin the process of returning the country's largest steel mill, Kryvorizhstal, to government control. A consortium that included the son-in-law, Viktor Pinchuk, of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma purchased the complex last year for $800 million, far below its estimated market value. Many privatizations in Ukraine...

According to the British newspaper “Independent,” one of the first actions of Ukraine’s newly elected Premier Julia Tymoshenko may be motivated by her personal animosity toward Leonid Kuchma. This appeared in an article titled “The Orange Princess targets the ‘Kuchma clan,’” [original title: “Ukraine’s new PM targets ‘Kuchma clan’”], as reported by the BBC. The “Independent” states that Ukraine’s new leaders have been looking into the country’s largest privatization scheme, referring to it as outright larceny. Concurrently, they are taking strides towards stripping former president Leonid Kuchma of his official privileges. The “Independent” indicates that members of the so-called “Kuchma...

Ukraine will reverse the controversial sale of state-owned steel mill Kryvorizhstal so that the firm can go back on the market at a higher price. Kryvorizhstal was sold to a group of investors that included the son-in-law of former President Leonid Kuchma. The winning bid in the privatization was $800m (£429m), and Ukraine rejected higher offers from foreign companies. Prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko said her government was cancelling "illegal" decisions by the former administration. "All documents which the former government approved illegally have been cancelled," Ms Tymoshenko said. "This means that we have begun the process of turning Kryvorizhstal back...

Ukraine’s authorities have confirmed plans to review the results of privatization. Last week, a Kiev court began considering a case over the privatization of the country’s largest metal works, the Krivorozhstal steel company, Vremya Novostei has reported. Yesterday, the court imposed a freeze on a 93.02 stake in the company. The freeze is designed to prevent the current owners of the company – Donetsk-based oligarch Renat Akhmetov, and Viktor Pinchuk, a deputy of Ukraine’s lower parliament chamber and son-in-law of ex-President Leonid Kuchma, - from selling the stock to affiliated companies. According to the newspaper, the court hearing is scheduled...

UKRAINE’S new prime minister, Yulia Timoshenko, has begun a battle to clear her fugitive husband of corruption allegations and punish his accusers’ allies in the regime ousted in Kiev’s Orange Revolution. She has protested to the Supreme Court about a criminal case brought by allies of the former president, Leonid Kuchma, against Alexander Timoshenko, her husband, who is now in hiding abroad. The action is the first shot in what is likely to be a passionate campaign by the fiery politician against Kuchma and his cronies to avenge their attempts to have her, her husband and her father-in-law imprisoned on...

A Kiev court on Thursday froze shares in Ukraine's largest steel mill, which was sold last year to a group that included former President Leonid Kuchma's son-in-law in one of the country's most-criticized privatization deals. The court ordered that the consortium that purchased the Krivoryzhstal steel mill "should not release, sell or deposit shares" pending the end of court proceedings, Ukrainian news agencies reported. Kuchma's son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk, coal and steel tycoon Rinat Akhmetov and others make up the consortium that bought the mill for US$800 million (euro665 million). Court officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The ruling...

Eve of the inauguration On the day of Viktor Yushchenko's inauguration, Tom Mangold reveals the extraordinary story of his rivals' plot to deny him power. It's inauguration day for new President Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's modernist President, a reformer who beat a brutal and medieval assassination attempt by poisoning and an outrageous example of poll rigging last November to become Ukraine's new leader. And only now are the astonishing truths of Mr Yushchenko's fight for the leadership he had earned being revealed. An investigation has discovered: · Britain's germ warfare laboratory in Porton Down has received a biopsy of his skin...

(AP) - A Kyiv court opened proceedings Jan. 21 on whether to annul the privatization of Ukraine's largest steel mill, which was sold for $800 million (665 million euros) last year to a group that included the president's son-in-law. The court proceedings were proposed by a parliamentary commission and a lawmaker loyal to President-elect Viktor Yushchenko, and underlined expectations that the new administration will re-examine some of Ukraine's murkiest business deals. The Krivoryzhstal steel mill was sold by the state to coal and steel tycoons Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, despite reported higher...

KIEV, Ukraine, Jan. 16 - As protests here against a rigged presidential election overwhelmed the capital last fall, an alarm sounded at Interior Ministry bases outside the city. It was just after 10 p.m. on Nov. 28. More than 10,000 troops scrambled toward trucks. Most had helmets, shields and clubs. Three thousand carried guns. Many wore black masks. Within 45 minutes, according to their commander, Lt. Gen. Sergei Popkov, they had distributed ammunition and tear gas and were rushing out the gates. Kiev was tilting toward a terrible clash, a Soviet-style crackdown that could have brought civil war. And then,...

In the past, Ukrainians often referred to Western democracies as “civilized,” with the inherent implication that post-Soviet Ukraine was not. The “Orange Revolution,” which led, on 26 December, to the victory of the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko in rerun elections has opened the door for Ukrainians to a new, “civilized” future. The results suggested, though, that many Ukrainians do not accept either that the West is civilized or that the Ukraine of President Leonid Kuchma was uncivilized (or both). The preliminary results in the final round showed Ukraine almost as deeply divided as the fraud-marred earlier rounds had suggested. Yushchenko...

Ukraine minister's death could have been murder disguised as suicide Whether the death of Ukrainian Transport Minister Heorhiy Kyrpa on 27 December was suicide or murder disguised as suicide is less important than the reasons behind it, according to an article by Oleksandra Prymachenko in the Ukrainian weekly Zerkalo Nedeli. Just like the banker Yuriy Lyakh, who was found dead in suspicious circumstances last month, Kyrpa knew a lot about the criminal activities in which many leaders of the outgoing administration reportedly engaged. This made him a liability to outgoing President Leonid Kuchma and his other close associates and a...

The extent of an apparent plot to poison Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's opposition leader, and then cover up the evidence now reaches across Europe. Soon after Yushchenko first claimed he had been poisoned, President Leonid Kuchma's son-in-law engaged a French public relations team to initiate a media campaign, centered on a Vienna clinic, calculated to disparage the poisoning accusations, the newspaper said. Yffic Nouvellon of EuroRSCG and his public relations team arranged a press conference where Lothar Wicke, general manager of Vienna's Rudolfinerhaus Clinic, contradicted Yushchenko's poisoning allegations. Nouvellon also contacted international media offering "evidence" Yushchenko had not been poisoned. When...

Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader, claimed on Thursday he was poisoned at a dinner in early September with the heads of the country's secret police. "That was the only place where no one from my team was present and no precautions were taken concerning the food," he said. "It was a project of political murder, prepared by the authorities." An official investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor general into the poisoning of Mr Yushchenko is under way. The investigation was launched after the Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna, where Mr Yushchenko underwent tests, confirmed last weekend he was suffering from dioxin...

Ukraine judges 'under pressure' to reverse ruling By Tom Warner in Kiev Published: December 15 2004 17:37 | Last updated: December 15 2004 17:37 Volodymyr Lytvyn, the speaker of Ukraine's parliament, said on Wednesday that court judges were being pressured to reverse a decision that stripped Volodymyr Satsyuk, deputy chief of the SBU secret police, of parliamentary immunity. Mr Satsyuk, who is also a member of parliament, hosted a late-night meeting with Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader, hours before the latter's poisoning symptoms first appeared in early September. An official investigation into the poisoning of the presidential candidate is under...

...The oligarchs have another fear: that a Yushchenko victory could push them out of the inner circle of power and perhaps force a review of controversial privatization deals under which the clans acquired huge state-owned industrial facilities, sometimes for hundreds of millions of dollars below market value. Yushchenko's campaign has made its position clear. "When you see a country that's been turned into a limited joint stock company that's controlled by a handful of people, this is something we can't accept," Oleksandr Zinchenko, a key Yushchenko lieutenant, said in an interview this year. "The system requires radical change." Akhmetov, a...

UKRAINE’S outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma, is trying to negotiate a deal that would guarantee him and his family immunity from prosecution in return for satisfying opposition demands over the rerunning of elections on December 26. As jubilant supporters of Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader, partied on the streets of the capital Kiev last night to celebrate the success of their historic two-week campaign to annul the result of last month’s presidential vote, it emerged that Kuchma is locked in frosty talks to secure his own future. Presidential sources said Kuchma, 66, a former Communist party boss, is seeking assurances he...

KIEV -- Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, whose Orange Revolution has brought him to the edge of power, now faces a stark choice between seeking compromise with President Leonid Kuchma's regime or inheriting a country spiralling into chaos, a key government insider said yesterday. Viktor Pinchuk, a powerful business tycoon and Mr. Kuchma's son-in-law, told The Globe and Mail that if Mr. Yushchenko did not back down, the country could be crippled by a deepening economic crisis, as well as separatism in the east of the country. Both, he said, were very real threats to the country's future if the...

Outgoing president Leonid Kuchma is threatening a collapse of the Ukraine economy to pressure the opposition. But really it's the country's industrialists and Kuchma's own policies that are to blame. Millions flow into their pockets each day. Thirty-seven-year-old dental technician Igor Brodan is married and has two children. He lives in Trostanez, a city 400 kilometers northeast of Kiev, where one of the major employers is a chocolate factory. One would think a job there would be sufficient to put meat and potatos, a bottle of vodka and some sweets on the table -- albeit with a lifetime supply of...

UKRAINE’S opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, must choose between becoming President of a divided and bankrupt nation or severing links with radical allies and sharing power with a compromise figure, according to one of the country’s most powerful men. Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of Leonid Kuchma, the outgoing President, told The Times that a new presidential election, with some new candidates, was the only way out of the crisis. “If he is a patriot, he has to understand the real situation: we must find a compromise,” Mr Pinchuk, a billionaire and member of the Ukrainian parliament, said. “The best way is for...

The sight of hundreds of thousands of protesters in Kiev has rocked Ukraine's business oligarchs who mostly backed the bid by Viktor Yanukovich, prime minister, for the presidency. Business leaders assumed the authorities would deliver the required result and deal effectively with any public backlash in favour of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko. But the scale of the demonstrations, road blocks and strikes has shocked them, and their influence is critical, as they have acquired their wealth and power by working closely with Leonid Kuchma, the outgoing president. Most remain wedded to Mr Yanukovich, especially the barons of his political...

As a recent immigrant to the United States from Kharkov (XAPKOB) Ukraine I am amazed by the lack of insight by the news media.. The closest things to the truth that I have read comes from this blog... Behind the Scenes -- How and Why the Ukrainian Election was Stolen, Part I Reading through my comments, I'm seeing that the situation really isn't clear to some in the West. Discounting the reflexively silly Bush-haters, there are some normal people who are viewing this simply through the lens of election corruption. That's only the surface. You have to understand the situation...

Ukraine’s richest, most powerful people have stayed out of the spotlight during the five days of what’s being called the Ukrainian opposition’s “Orange Revolution.” That’s no surprise, as opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has been calling them “bandits” during rallies, and saying they belong in jail after robbing the Ukrainian nation of its riches and suppressing democracy. Many believe that if the opposition takes control of the government, Ukraine’s so-called “oligarchs” – who backed the candidacy of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych - could be tried for stealing state property, election fraud, and other crimes. This group includes Presidential Administration head Viktor...

KYIV - Dr. Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State, Nobel Prize winner, author, and founder/chairman of Kissinger Associates in New York City, will speak in Kyiv, Ukraine late next week as part of an international lecture series according to reports in Kyiv. Dr. Kissinger will be the guest of Viktor Pinchuk, member of the Ukrainian Parliament, a leading industrialist who is the owner of several large businesses in Ukraine including the ICTV Channel. Mr. Pinchuk is married to Olena Franchuk, daughter of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Olena Franchuk recently started a foundation in Ukraine to fight the spread of...