The Russian mobile operator (aka OAO Vympelkom) has been found guilty of rather shameless plagiarizing, so Beeline is now busy deleting all the copies of the compromising ad from online resources, Newsru.com reports. The offending video clip advertising the company’s prices turned out to be a copy of Oren Lavie’s Her Morning Elegance, a Grammy nominee. According to NEWSru Israel, the two clips’ plots are different, but the style and the performance of Beeline’s ad bear very strong resemblance to those of Oren Lavie. The mobile operator claims the Israeli singer’s clip was only an inspiration

The decision to have AMUR, Sverdlovsk Region-based car factory, undergo bankruptcy proceedings has recently been contested. The decision was actually taken by the company’s shareholders on March 11, 2010, but has not come into effect yet. Novouralsk tax authorities and the city council filed a petition for halting the bankruptcy proceedings at the plant but refused to explain their motivation. Now the factory, currently controlled by Pavel Chernavin, was declared bust in August 2009.

The net profit of OAO Vympelkom (the owner of one of Russia’s Big Three mobile operators) amounted to $283m in the fourth quarter of 2009 (if calculated in accordance with the US GAAP). However, a year earlier the company had $816m worth of net loss, the organization reports. Nevertheless, Vympelkom’s profit in the last quarter of 2009 was 34.6% lower than that in the third quarter of 2009. Also, the quarterly revenues reached $2.3bn, which was 9.6% lower than in the last quarter of 2008.

‘Our company has big plans for developing in the Urals: this is actually a strategic territory for M.Video. This year, our new stores will appear in Yekaterinburg, Ufa, and Berezniki. In 2011, we’ll set up more stores in Chelyabinsk, Magnitogorsk, Yekaterinburg, and Ufa,’ M.Video’s press officer Nadezhda Kiseleva informed UrBC. In the meantime, the home appliances and electronic goods stores keep selling less and cutting down on the number of outlets throughout Russia. Technosila hypermarket chain, for example, halted its store in Kurgan until mid-summer. It appears that M.Video is planning

One of Russia’s major air carriers, Ural Airlines is about to enter the transportation market of Bashkortostan. The airline is going to launch flights from Ufa to Dushanbe and from Ufa to Hudzhand. The first Ufa-Dushanbe flight will be operated on April 3, 2010; the first Ufa-Hudzhand flight will be operated on April 10, 2010. Both flights will be available once a fortnight on the modern and safe Airbus A320 airplanes. Ufa-Dushanbe flight’s departure time is 11:30 PM and arrival time is 1:30 AM; Dushanbe-Ufa flight’s departure time is 3:00 AM and arrival time is 7:05 AM; Ufa-Hudzhand flight’s

OAO Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank is not going to pay its shareholders any dividends for the year 2009. This proposal of the bank’s BOD was placed on the agenda of Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank’s annual general meeting scheduled for April 22, 2010. The meeting will take place in Khanty-Mansiysk. In addition to solving the issue of dividends, the stockholders will be offered to re-elect Dmitriy Mizgulin President and Chairman of the bank’s Supervisory Board until March 17, 2015.

OAO TyumenEnergo started closing down its regional subsidiaries. According to the data provided by the company, the branches to stop operating are Ishim Electricity Networks, Tyumen Electricity Networks, Southern Electricity Networks, and Tobolsk Electricity Networks.

OAO Izhneftemash (part of Rimera, ChTPZ Group’s O&G division) signed a number of agreements with the oil companies of Kazakhstan and is to deliver over $6m worth of deep-well oil pumps’ driving gears to them. The company has already shipped its first batch of beam units to consumers; the delivery process will have been completed by September 2010. ‘Izhneftemash’s market expansion is a logical outcome of hard work aimed at promoting our produce on the Asian markets of the CIS. In addition to doing business with Kazakhstan, we expect to enter the markets of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan this

The net profit of OAO Uralkaliy (calculated in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) decreased by 25.5 times last year in comparison to the year 2008, that is, from 29.48 billion RUR to 1.15 billion RUR. The company explains such a large drop in profit has to do with shrinking produce sales, which, in their turn, were caused by the plummeting global demand at the time of an economic recession. ‘What is more, last year the company had to pay 7.8 billion RUR to compensate for the expenses related to dealing with the accident at one of their divisions,’ Kommersant reports.

OAO Gazpromneft-Tyumen paid a 16.5-million-ruble fine for price collusion on Tyumen Region’s oil market. The company transferred this sum to the budget after it had lost its case at the appeals instance. Gazpromneft-Tyumen had insisted that the ruling of Tyumen Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service be declared invalid; now the FAS’s division had demanded that the company face administrative liability. Tyumen Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service found out that OAO Gazpromneft-Tyumen, OOO Lukoil-Uralnefteprodukt, and OOO AZS-N1 had colluded on their pricing

‘ZAO Russian Copper Company and the BOD Chairman Igor Altushkin have nothing to do with MetallInvestService’s activity; they are neither employed by nor own nor are the founders or co-founders of this business. MetallInvestService was only a raw materials supplier for one of Russian Copper OCompany’s enterprises and has bought our ready produce once or twice,’ Russian Copper Company’s press officer said in response to the news item carried by RBC daily. RBC daily claimed Igor Altushkin might be related to a criminal lawsuit involving VAT return for the non-existent non-ferrous scrap metal

Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport denied the claims made by the public prosecution authorities for transportation; the authorities said in their letter as of January 18, 2010 that the airport violated the rules of passenger insurance. Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities for transportation insist the airport’s booking offices violated the rights of their customers by making them pay for the accident insurance alongside with the ticket to Moscow. When tickets were sold at the airport’s terminal A, the passengers were not explained that the insurance was optional. This actually

Over 152 cars were stolen and 156 cars were misappropriated in Sverdlovsk Region throughout January 1, 2010 to March 15, 2010. These figures were, respectively, 41.3% and 56.3% lower than those for the year earlier (259 cars and 357 cars, respectively). In about 28.6% of cases, the thieves of the stolen cars were detected (compared with 23.1% in the first two and a half months of 2009); the misappropriated automobiles were found in 57.8% of cases (compared with 54.7% in the first two and a half months of 2009), the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region’s road police report. Despite the general

General Motors’ newest makes will soon hit Yekaterinburg thanks to OOO Commercial Bank Koltso Urala’s efforts. The bank offered Autobahn-Zapad (GM’s official dealer) an overdraft. The dealer is going to use the money to buy the latest automobile makes, says the bank’s Business Customer Director Ekaterina Nikitina. ‘Cooperating with car dealers is a common thing for our bank. Apart from this particular company, we offer our loans to a few other large local car retailers and thus participate indirectly in the lives of local dwellers, who get a chance to buy the newest models on the market,’ she

The world’s largest online auction e-Bay and a number of other foreign e-shops have started refusing to sell things to Russian customers this week. This happened because the Russian Post stretched its package delivery period from two weeks to two months at the beginning of the year, Newsru.com reports. The rules of PayPal (the system employed to pay for the e-orders) state that the order must be delivered to the customer within thirty days of the purchase; if the seller fails to do so and does not give the customer a refund, his or her e-account could be closed down, the portal explains. The

Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities for transportation looked into the activity of Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport after they had received a multi-authored petition from customers who felt the airport’s booking offices violated their rights when making them pay for the accident insurance alongside with the ticket to Moscow, the spokesperson for the authorities reports. The investigation made it clear that under the agency agreement existing between OAO Voyenno-Strakhovaya Kompaniya (an insurer) and Koltsovo, the airport was to attract customers for the accident insurance

First Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government and Economy Minister Mikhail Maksimov chaired a meeting of the regional business support committee on the financial situation at the mid-Ural enterprises and on the actions taken to raise the regional budget’s tax revenues. The top executives of UC RUSAL, Uralvagonzavod, Uralmashzavod, Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise, Gazprom Transgaz Yekaterinburg, and MRSK Urala made some reports on the measures taken at their companies to fight the recession. At the end of the meeting, Mikhail Maksimov asked the heads of these companies

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) inspected nine supermarkets run by OOO Lev (Kirovskiy supermarket chain) and detected some violations of the sanitation-and-epidemiological safety regulations and of consumers’ rights, the spokesperson for Rospotrebnadzor reports. The most common offenses have to do with unsatisfactory sanitary conditions, unaccepted ways of storing foods, ignoring the sell-by date, failing to retain all the price tags with expiry dates on them, lack of control over the quality of pre-prepared foods, sweets, and pastry,

RRG, a consultant company, recently looked into the Russian luxury retail market; the company’s research focused on 272 luxury, premium, and upper middle brands. The agency reports Central Federal District is the most developed one in terms of luxury products’ availability and North-Western Federal District, with its 120 stores, is the second most developed region. RRG explains 62% of all the luxury shops in Russia operate within some shopping mall; as far as Central Federal District is concerned, 73% of luxury shops open within a mall and in Ural and Siberian Federal Districts over 60% of

‘We had to make our Kurgan-based Technosila hypermarket stop operating for the time being, that is, until mid-summer. The thing is, the local market was badly affected by the recession; our shop is located in a new mall where not even 50% of available place has been taken up by tenants, so it’s just economically inexpedient for us to run an outlet there,’ the electronic goods chain’s Vice President for Strategy Leonid Tyukavkin informed UrBC. ‘Under the current circumstances, a halt is a clever thing to do; we do not leave Kurgan market and do not make anyone redundant. We just stop operating