January 15, 2016. Yekaterinburg police officers detained a 27-year-old man from Beloyarsky who is suspected of real estate fraud. The spokesperson for the city police department says the suspect arrived in Yekaterinburg last September to rent a studio apartment in Shchors St for one day. He then immediately advertised the place online as a rental location available for a month. ‘Three different people called who were interested in the offer and decided to sign the rental contract. The suspect actually signed three deals in one day, getting 17,000 RUR 10,000 RUR, and 28,000 RUR from the first,

January 15, 2016. Russia’s international air travel market got 14% smaller last year, Finmarket refers to the Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov as saying. ‘This is the country’s average; in fact, the figure dropped to as much as 30%-40% to 50% in certain airports,’ the minister said. In the meantime, the domestic market turnover reached 93m passengers last year, Sokolov said, which was almost as much as in the year 2014 (93.181m passengers). According to the minister, last year’s share of domestic flights amounted to 55%-60% of the country’s entire air travel market.

January 15, 2016. Regional Airports Holding (a part of Renova Group) bought a 17.28% shareholding in Koltsovo International Airport from Sverdlovsk Region Government, thus becoming the owner of 87.04% of the airport’s shares. The transaction’s cost is reported to come to 1.259bn RUR. The controlling shareholding went to Regional Airports Management Company in early 2015; the 17.5% stake was sold for the opening bid of 1.259bn RUR. No other potential bidders had applied for the auction.

January 15, 2016. Sverdlovsk Region-based enterprises had to pay a total of 1.655m RUR in fines for selling defective children’s products, the local division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) reports. According to the division, 148 sellers of children’s products got inspected last year, with over 12,000 items examined altogether. The figure included 4,476 children’s games and toys. It was determined that 1,536 items (total worth 479,800 RUR, most of them from China), or 34.3% of all the children’s goods available for purchase, did not meet the existing legal selling

January 15, 2016. Yekaterinburg’s Koltsovo Airport (a member enterprise of Regional Airports Holding) offered its services to 4,247,541 passengers last year, which was 6% less than one year earlier. The airport’s press service reports the decrease in passenger traffic had to do with the considerably shrinking international air travel market. ‘Slightly over 1.5m passengers traveled abroad from Koltsovo last year, whereas in the previous year, the figure was 29% larger. At the same time, domestic flights turnover actually went up by nearly 14% in 2015 compared with 201 and came to 2,745,236