Bank24.ru’s official website states that the bank’s former BOD Chairman Boris Dyakonov is now employed in the capacity of Deputy Chair of the Supervisory Board. In the meantime, the Board of Directors is now headed by a Life Group representative Yaroslav Alekseev. Even though the bank only reported the news to the public on March 13, 2009, the changes themselves took place as early as the end of February. One could assume that the news was placed on the bank’s official website following the media inquires as to what position Boris Dyakonov was holding at the moment.

Ural Airlines is going to re-launch its Israel-bound flights on March 25, 2009. ‘We’ve had to cancel this destination for two months, but now that the passengers’ safety can no longer be questioned, the flight is on our schedule again. This is one of our oldest international flights, actually: we keep operating flights to Israel for over a decade now,’ says the airline’s Commercial Director Kirill Skuratov. The departure and arrival times have remained the same: the flight is operated every Wednesday using an A 320 airplane. The plane leaves Yekaterinburg at 11.30 AM and arrives in Tel Aviv

The Department of Internal Affairs Ural Federal District’s division officers suppressed a crime group whose members are believed to have stolen 6.3 million RUR from Perviy Respublikanskiy Bank and some 16 million RUR from Koltso Urala Bank. The officers of the Yekaterinburg-based division initiated a number of criminal lawsuits on March 11, 2009, with charges based on Article 4 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code (large-scale fraud by an organized crime group). Their investigation revealed that a number of people had been using the names of companies like Konservant, Uralprodukt, and

‘The decision to close down Euroset-Boutique in Krasnoarmeyskaya St. in Yekaterinburg was taken as early as December 2008. What we are mostly interested in is the economic expediency of running every single outlet, and in this store’s case, we were hoping to reduce our outgoings through lowering the sky-high rent. We’ve tried negotiating with the landlords a number of times, but, alas, to no avail,’ Euroset Ural branch CEO Kirill Shabanov said to an UrBC reporter. ‘We are planning to reopen our luxury boutique very soon; this is actually a matter of two to three months’ time. But the boutique

‘The first court hearing of the claim laid by the workers of Krasnaya Shapochka mine against UC RUSAL’s Severouralsk bauxite mine (SUBR) took place on March 12, 2009. The hearing of one particular case (A.V. Novoselov vs. SUBR) was put off until the following day, with another one (N.V. Pidenko vs. SUBR) was scheduled for March 16-17, 2009,’ SUBR independent trade union’s head Valeriy Zolotarev said to UrBC. ‘Following a miners’ strike last year, two of the workers were taken off the job on the basis of a medical checkup results. Now the workers actually contest the conclusion these doctors

Head of Russian Government Vladimir Putin signed a decree giving Chelyabinsk Region’s oncologic clinic the status of a district medical center, Deputy Governor Evgeniy Redin informed Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin. The center therefore became the only one with such a status among eleven clinic located in different Russian constituencies. Another ten oncologic dispensaries are going to become regional medical centers. As a matter of fact, Chelyabinsk Region was involved in the program targeted at decreasing cancer-related mortality rate as early as last year. Now that the local