October 21, 2013. On Monday, October 21, Sverdlovsk Region Court will complete the hearing of appeals relating to the case of Alexei Kalinichenko and will return its verdict, the court press service informed UrBC. Now Yekaterinburg Leninsky District Court declared the mastermind of financial pyramid schemes Alexei Kalinicheko guilty of large-scale fraud (Article 159 (part 4) of Russian Federation Criminal Code) in May 2013. The man was accused of stealing over 1bn RUR and was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison. The pleading party asks for the sentence to be annulled on the grounds that is both

October 18, 2013. Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (PNTZ, a member of ChTPZ Group), is going to support the development of the city cinemap. The City Code Project is now being implemented within the framework of a partnership with Russia's Culture Ministry on the construction of a New Culture Palace, the enterprise's press service reports. The cinemap will comprise over a hundred different video clips created by ten residents of Yekaterinburg and Pervouralsk. According to the project coordinator Anna Selyanina, the plot elements of the cinemap were prepared during the first five-day

October 18, 2013. UC RUSAL is going to cut its aluminum production by 647,500,000 kg, or 15% in 2014 compared with 2012. In 2013, aluminum production cuts amounted to 324,700,000 kg, or 8% of the 2012 production output, the company reports. The aluminum production is now zero at Volgograd, Volkhovsky, and Ural smelters, at Novokuznetsk smelter's Site 1, and at Nigeria-based ALSCON. Production was also stopped at Sections 2,3, 4, and 5 of Bogoslovsky smelter (Section 1 was frozen in 2011) and in Sections 1 and 2 of Nadvoitsky smelters (Section 3 was frozen in 2012). 'RUSAL keeps

October 18, 2013. Ural Rubber Goods Plant Board of Directors wants to sell its daughter company Chkalovsky Fuel & Energy Complex, the company's official message states. The Ural Rubber Goods Plant BOD is meeting on October 24, 2013 to look into the directive for the Director-General to sell a 100% share in Chkalovsky Fuel & Energy Complex's authorized capital. Chkalovsky currently belongs to Ural Rubber Goods Plant; the selling price should be at least as big as the one to be determined by the BOD. According to official reports, Chkalovsky Fuel & Energy Complex was set

October 18, 2013. UVZ Logistic is planning to buy over 2,500 railway carriages with enhanced freight capacity of 75,000 kg from Uralvagonzavod in 2013. The freight forwarder currently operates 1,800 such carriages, but UVZ Logistic is actually expected to have 8,000 of them by the end of 2014 and to add 5,000 more carriages to this fleet every year, Uralvagonzavod's press service reports. Buying the innovative carriages will both help the company expand its fleet of vehicles and serve as a weighty competitive advantage, as enhanced freight capacity stands for many benefits for both the

October 18, 2013. 727,000 sq m worth of housing was commissioned in Sverdlovsk Region in nine months of 2013. This was 8.9% more than a year earlier, Sverdlovskstat reports. Nevertheless, the figures for September 2013 are still 20.9% lower than for August 2013, and 1.5% lower than in September 2012.

October 17, 2013. The second forum of young metallurgical industry workers will be held on ChTPZ Group's premises on October 21-25, 2013. The idea behind this Innovators Club is to set up a unique platform for sharing experience where the engineers could get plenty of useful ideas, share their unusual solutions to burning production problems, and present their promising developments, ChTPZ Group's press service says. The club's first meeting took place on the premises of Interpipe in the spring of 2013 and united pipe manufacturers from the Urals and metallurgical industry

October 17, 2013. The first meeting of Sputnik Club's board of trustees took place in Nizhniy Tagil town house. The board has Mayor Sergey Nosov, Deputy Mayor for Social Policies Valeriy Surov, Sputnik Chairman of the Board Alexander Smelik, the club's senior coach Alexander Chelushkin on it, as well as Deputy Executive Director of the Supreme Hockey League Oleg Sutormin, Uralvagonzavod Corporation's press service says. Now the corporation is the general partner of Sputnik Hockey Club. Uralvagonzavod is represented on the Board by Deputy DG for PR and GR Alexei Zharich and

October 17, 2013. Ural Airlines keeps expanding its destinations network around the CIS and is now launching a new, direct flight from Ufa to Yerevan. On November 8, 2013, the first flight to the Armenian capital will be operated from Ufa. The new scheduled flight will be offered every fortnight, on Fridays, the air carrier's press service reports. 'Yerevan is not only the capital of Armenia but also a city of 'eternal holiday' where people can take their rime strolling in the streets, among parks and gardens. For those who want to go mountain skiing but does not have a

October 17, 2013. Nearly 3,000 violations of the existing labor protection legislation have been revealed in Ural Federal District since the beginning of 2013, the spokesperson for the district division of Russia's General Prosecutor's Office reports. 'The prosecutors carried out an inspection to detect all the cases when employers did not meet their obligations in terms of providing safe working conditions and allocating for this purpose at least 0.2% of the production expenses from the company budget. To make the employers comply wit these labor law requirements, the

October 17, 2013. The workforce of the Russian Federation had a total of 3.169bn RUR worth of unpaid wages as of October 1, 2013, Rosstat refers to the employers (excluding the small businesses) as reporting. This is 18.3%, or 490m RUR, more than on September 1, 2013. The arrears of wages resulting from the companies lacking their own funds was 3.092bn RUR, or 97.6% of the total amount, on October 1, 2013. This is 449m RUR (17%) more than on September 1, 2013. The arrears of wages that were due to the fact that subsidies from all sorts of state budgets were late amounted to 77m RUR, which was

October 17, 2013. MMK Group completed its deal on purchasing a 12.77% shareholding in Belon on the OTC market. As a result, the former’s stake in the coal company exceeded 95%. ‘This transaction has meant a consolidation of a large shareholding in Belon and meeting most claims of minority shareholders to having their shares in the company bought out by us,’ MMK reports.

October 16, 2013. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) set the record of making more than 750,000,000,000 kg of steel. According to the experts’ estimates, if the Egyptian pyramids were made of MMK steel (that is, if replicas of the largest one, the Pyramid of Cheops, were produced), this much steel would suffice to make forty of them. ‘Remarkably, MMK has reached this very important point in the Russian metallurgical industry in its ‘anniversary’ year: the company celebrated its 80th birthday in the summer of 2013, as the first open-hearth furnace was launched there on July 8, 2013,’

October 16, 2013. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) set the record of making more than 750,000,000,000 kg of steel. According to the experts’ estimates, if the Egyptian pyramids were made of MMK steel (that is, if replicas of the largest one, the Pyramid of Cheops, were produced), this much steel would suffice to make forty of them. ‘Remarkably, MMK has reached this very important point in the Russian metallurgical industry in its ‘anniversary’ year: the company celebrated its 80th birthday in the summer of 2013, as the first open-hearth furnace was launched there on July 8, 2013,’

October 16, 2013. Sinara Transport Machines presented a new family of diesel engines DM 185 at the 5th Ural Mining Industry Forum, the company's press service reports. The conference was dedicated to mining vehicles; experts from UDMZ (Ural Diesel Engine Plant, a member of Sinara Transport Machines) made a presentation on their new family of DM 185 diesel engines with the capacity of 750 to 4,600 kilowatts. The engines were designed by the plant for further use in the mining vehicles. After the business agenda of the forum was over, a tour of UDMZ was organized for the representatives of

October 16, 2013. Banki.ru, the information and analytics service, carried a rating of Russian banks based on the number of people they employ and on the median monthly pay in the first half of 2013. Bank Koltso Urala was featured in both lists, the bank's press service reports. The list features 100 largest banks in terms of net assets as of July 1, 2013. The data were obtained from the banks that publish their quarterly issuer ratings. According to the analysts behind the rating, 'the median pay was calculated on the basis of the banks' profit and loss statements (Form 102)

October 16, 2013. Sinara Development (a division of Sinara Group) took part in the international commercial estate and innovations exhibition called EXPO Real-2013 that was held in early October in Munich's largest exhibition facility, the company's press service reports. A layout of Bukatin Lug residential district was presented as one of the most promising among the multi-faceted area development projects in Volgograd Region. This is a public-private partnership that provides for the construction of low-rise apartment buildings, cottages, and town houses (total area over 200,000

October 16, 2013. 207,500,000 kg of potatoes were harvested in Sverdlovsk Region this year, which is 35,500,000 more than a year earlier. On average, the wholesale price comes to 8-10 RUR, and no dramatic price increase is to be expected, Deputy Minister for Agriculture & Foods Sergey Sharapov said at a briefing today. Sharapov does not think the vegetable prices are likely to go up sharply. He says, however, that potatoes are being harvested from very humid soil in most parts of Russia at the moment, which means the vegetables cannot be stored for a very long time. 'This might, in

October 16, 2013. According to Sverdlovskstat, a total of 727,700 sq m worth of housing was commissioned in Sverdlovsk Region in January-September 2013 through all sorts of financing. This was 9% more than in January-September 2012, Sverdlovsk Region Economics Ministry's press service reports. Private builders put up 55.7% of all this housing (405,200 sq m). This was 22% more than in January-September 2012. It should be noted that the commissioning of new economy class homes amounted to 50,200 sq m in Sverdlovsk Region in January-September 2013, which was 29% less than a year earlier. In

October 15, 2013. Public prosecution authorities are going to investigate the case of nitric acid leakage at one of the departments in Verknyaya Salda-based VSMPO-Avisma. The authorities are planning to look into the hows and whys of the accident and to determine the executives responsible for this, Ural Federal District division of Russia's General Prosecutor's Office says. Now what happened was a case of pipeline depressurization that was used for nitric acid delivery; a leakage occurred, resulting in one person getting injured and ten people evacuated. The residents of Verknyaya