‘Providing for commercial security is an important part of social security and a top priority issue at the moment. This is a problem both the country as a whole and every city in Russia is faced with. This is true of Yekaterinburg as well. I believe this issue needs to be discussed and to be given a lot of attention at the city’s Security Council meeting,’ says Europe-Asia Information and Consulting Center’s GD and President of Ural Center of Nongovernmental Security Institutions Association Oleg Borisov. The first professional report on Yekaterinburg’s security services market came out in

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met the General Director of Asha Metallurgical Works Vladimir Evstratov. The two executives looked into the enterprise’s current problems and tried to think of how to actually implement the company’s long-term investment projects targeted at modernization. Evstratov said the first modernization stage was completed in 2006 when the new ladle furnace was launched; the second stage was carried out in 2007 when the new CC machine started operating at the plant. However, the outbreak of the global economic turmoil prevented the enterprise from going

Ural Transport Machine-Building Works, Euroset Yekaterinburg, Ural & Siberia Metallurgical Company, Yekaterinburg Pharmaceutical Factory, Pnevmostroymachina, and Ural Turbine Plant have been placed on the list of companies owing more than 1 million RUR to the state (i.e. the Russian Federation budget), Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Tax Service reports. All in all, the list comprised 341 enterprises on March 15, 2009.

The agreements signed with Bank Severnaya Kazna’s (now the asset of Alfa-Bank) top managers that provided the latter with greater salaries, a life time medical insurance and impressive redundancy payments have been declared void and cancelled. Following the order of the Russian Federation’s Deputy Prosecutor-General, the region’s public prosecution authorities carried out an investigation of the bank’s former managers allegedly illegal practices and found out that the offense did take place. It was detected that in October 2008, despite the ongoing economic crisis and the bank’s being unable

‘At the time of a crisis, the number of bank-related complaints has gone up by 50%. All in all, we have received fifty-four complaints about the banks’ activity since the outbreak of the trouble,’ Inna Abolonina, Sverdlovsk Region Consumer Rights Protection Society’s legal advisor said to UrBC. ‘Most complaints have to do with lending issues and bank deposits, with the latter dominating over the former. People complain of a whole range of banks, including Bank Russkiy Standart and Sberinvestbank,’ she added.