March 4, 2015. This year’s first cash smuggling attempt was prevented at Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg, Koltsovo Customs’ press service reports. ‘A Russian citizen flying from Yekaterinburg to Bangkok had over $23,000 (1.483m RUR) worth of cash in his carry-on luggage which he tried to take across the Customs Union border. This is classed as a large-scale smuggling attempt, with charges based on Article 200.1 (Part 1) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code,’ the press service says. Last year, Koltsovo Customs prevented three similar attempts, the total amount of cash being over $126,000.

March 4, 2015. Travelers from the Urals are now making trips to Egypt even less often than people from other parts of Russia, the Executive Director of Ural Tourism Association Mikhail Maltsev told UrBC. RBC refers to Egypt’s statistic-gathering agencies as stating that the inflow of Russian tourists into the country dropped by 12%, or down to 199,500 people, in December 2014. ‘The decrease in the number of Ural travelers to Egypt was higher than Russia’s average last December, since Egypt-bound flights disappeared from Chelyabinsk, Perm, and Tyumen airports altogether, so everyone had to fly

March 4, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region’s debt rose by 47% in 2014 and reached 49.6bn RUR on January 1, 2015, RIA Rating refers to the Russian Finance Ministry and the Federal Treasury as saying. The debt/tax and non-tax revenue ratio changed from 9.6% to 34.8% over last year. All in all, the accumulated government debt of all the Russian federal constituencies increased by 20% in 2014 and came to 2.089 trillion RUR on January 1, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region Finance Minister Galina Kulachenko said earlier that the constituency’s debt would triple by January 1, 2018 and thus amount to 126.4bn RUR due to

March 4, 2015. ChTPZ Engineering (a member enterprise of ChTPZ Group) presented its new pipes for the oil and gas sector at the 10th Annual Russian Shelf 2015 Conference, the Group’s press service reports. The conference, dedicated to the future of liquefied natural gas and shelf oil development in Russia, is held in Moscow on March 3-4. ‘ChTPZ Group currently has at its disposal the entire set of technologies, equipment, and materials necessary to contribute to construction of oil wells at shelf plates; the company also focuses on the development of new pipes as part of its import

March 4, 2015. In 2014, Uralvagonzavod Corporation directed 4m RUR to help repair and remodel the kindergartens located in Dzerzhinsky District of Nizhniy Tagil; this was twice as much as was donated a year earlier. This year, despite the ongoing crisis, the company will allocate the same amount of money to support the daycare centers, the corporation’s press service reports. There are 32 kindergartens in the area, attended by 5,161 children. Each kindergarten is patronized by one of the corporation’s head plant’s departments or other Nizhniy Tagil-based member enterprises, namely,