Yekaterinburg police officers are looking into the activity of Autolime motor show’s director. It is suspected that Ilnar E. (33), who dealt in the sales of used cars, disappeared out of sight with his customers’ money, the press office for Yekaterinburg Department of Sverdlovsk Region division of Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry Main Administration told the reporters. In fact, these were Autolime’s employees who informed Police Department 9 on Thursday, March 22, that their director had been out of reach for a few days already. They said the director, Ilnar E., resided in Ufa, the Republic

According to Auto-Dealer-Yekaterinburg, 12,254 new automobiles were sold in Yekaterinburg in January and February 2012, which is 35%, or 3,054 cars more than in the two months of 2011. 7,029 cars were sold in the city in February alone, which was 39%, or 1,961 cars more than a year earlier. Lada is still by far the best-selling make on Yekaterinburg market. At the same time, the share of the Russian brand on the local market is going down: it used to come to 17% at the end of 2011 but amounted to only 14.6% at the end of February 2012. Significant changes can be observed among the top five

A direct air link has been introduced between Nizhniy Novgorod and Prague: Ural Airlines has launched a new scheduled flight. All of these flights will be operated using a modern and comfortable A 320 plane. Tickets are available for ?230. The flight will be operated every Saturday. Thanks to the convenient timetable, all those willing to travel from Prague to any other destination in Europe can do so: an interline agreement between Ural Airlines and the national Czech air carrier Czech Airlines allows for a one-time check-in which means a passenger gets a single ticket and can check in his

In order to meet its customers’ needs, RosTransAvto is now offering them the services relating to the delivery and renting of tower cranes. ‘Customers can both buy or rent our MITSUBER tower cranes as well as order the assembling and dismantling of the machinery we supply,’ RosTransAvto reports. Among the strong points of MITSUBER building tower cranes is the electronic and electric equipment manufactured by the French concern Shneider Electric; what is more, the cranes are fully adjusted for operation in Russia and the CIS member states at temperatures ranging from -40 to +40 degrees

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) keeps introducing more facilities for the production of zinc-coated rolled metal products. This news was announced by Sergey Pikalov, Senior Manager for Coated Metal & Tin Sales from MMK Trade Sales Department, at the 7th international conference on galvanized and paint-coated rolled metal goods in Moscow. MMK’s coating shop currently operates two continuous hot-dip galvanizing units with the capacity of 500,000 and 450,000 tons of goods a year. The units were supplied by the Italian firm Danieli and were launched in 2002 and 2008. Over 5m tons of

Uralburmash made 913,000 RUR worth of net profit (calculated in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) in 2011, which was 11.8 times less than in 2010, the company’s report states. The enterprise’s revenues rose by 5.7% and came to 821.26m RUR, Interfax-Ural reports.

Russia’s Ministry for Economic Development invited the member enterprises of Sverdlovsk Region Union of Industrialists & Entrepreneurs to take part in the organization of an economic and investment opportunities demonstration center for Russian regions on the premises of Russia’s Trade Representation in Germany. The center will be located at 61 Unter-den-Linden St in Berlin, in the buildings run by Russia’s Trade Representation in Germany. ‘This is an opportunity to present the Russian companies’ demonstration stands, booklets, and samples of export-oriented produce,’ Sverdlovsk Region

The Supreme Court of the Czech Republic put an end to a court trial involving the former head of Yekaterinburg Non-Ferrous Metals Processing Plant Nikolai Timofeyev and the U.S.-based B&H Instruments LLC: Timofeyev was, after all, declared insolvent, Kommersant-Ural says. B&H Instruments LLC insisted that the businessman be declared bankrupt as he failed to meet his contractual obligations relating to paying back a loan amounting to 15m Czech korunas (about $1m). According to the court files, his American partner company lent Timofeyev the money in July 2007 so that the businessman

The Polish Embassy will set up eight visa centers (in Vologda, Khabarovsk, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Rostov-on-Don, Omsk, Yekaterinburg, and Smolensk) by July 2012. According to the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Poland to Russia Wojciech Zaj№czkowski, the decision was made in order to give the chance to visit the republic to as many people as possible. ‘We operate three Consulates-General in Russia and a consular section at the embassy in Moscow. Even though we issued over 160,000 visas last year, we came to the conclusion that the current network is too small for Russia, for an

The founder of a white goods and electronic appliances chain store Rafael Shikhov is no longer on Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank’s list of Anti-Partners (people who failed to meet their obligations towards the bank); however, the businessman has not paid off its debts to the bank yet. ‘Rafael Shikhov is still one of our debtors. The businessman and his organization still haven’t paid off their debt to the bank,’ Assistant to the bank’s President Igor Vassilyev told UrBC. Now the municipal Duma deputy Rafael Shikhov used to be on the list of those who failed to meet their obligations towards the

Rosbank’s Ural Federal District branch announced that its reorganization is now complete. The bank’s Ural subsidiary located in Yekaterinburg was set up through a merger of regional subdivisions. However, this was accompanied by redundancies, Rosbank’s First Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board Igor Antonov explained to reporters in the course of a press conference. ‘We have re-evaluated our risks approaches, and our terms have grown stricter. We had to stop doing business with some of the borrowers, which resulted in fewer overdue loans. We have also switched to a forceful reduction of

NOMOS Bank is reducing the number of offices it operates in the Urals. For one, the bank will soon leave Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk Regions. NOMOS’s outlets will be handed over to Khanty-Mansiysky Bank which is actually co-owned by NOMOS, NOMOS Bank’s President Dmitri Sokolov told the reporters at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. NOMOS Bank currently runs two offices in Yekaterinburg and one office in Kamensk-Uralsky. As for the Southern Urals, there is one office in each of these: Chelyabinsk, Magnitogorsk, and Trekhgorny. At the same time, there are already two outlets of

Autoland Sweden went into liquidation because of reorganization through merging with RegionProm. This news was announced at a Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court hearing. In the meantime, MDM Bank is trying to make Uralchermetavto and Autoland Sever pay them over 206m RUR. As Autoland Sweden stopped operating as an independent entity, the court is replacing the third party with its assignee, RegionProm. The preliminary court hearing for the case was therefore put off till April 2, 2012.

The management of the Russian social network VKontakte accused Samsung Electronics’ Russian representation and the content provider i-Free of a corrupt collusion, Interfax reports. VKontakte’s Deputy DG Ilya Perekopsky came up with a statement where he claims that at the end of 2011, the representatives of Samsung’s Russian division asked the social network to allow them to pre-install the official VKontakte app onto Samsung smartphone Android platform. VKontakte agreed to this, but Samsung representatives suddenly announced early in 2012 that they had decided to design their own Android app,

The American division of Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) TMK IPSCO is now working on the construction of a production site meant for manufacturing pipes with ULTRA premium threaded joints and for maintenance. The site is located in Edmonton, Canada. The new production line, fitted with the most advanced equipment, will produce a full range of premium threaded joints of the UTRA family. The customers will also be offered a variety of accompanying products and maintenance and repair services. The new line is expected to be launched in Edmonton at the end of 2012.

Ural Airlines keeps on with its fleet of vehicles upgrade program. One more Airbus A320 plane bearing Ural Airlines’ company colors took off in Beirut and landed in Koltsovo Airport the other day. This means the airline now operates 24 Airbus liners (fifteen A 320 ones and nine A 321 ones). Just like the other planes, this one was acquired on operating lease terms. The airplane has both business and economy class sections and is intended for operating scheduled flights. The air carrier plans to expand its Airbus collection to thirty planes by 2014 as well as to buy long-haul aircraft for

Yekaterinburg city council says that the most important strategic task in the field of local trade infrastructure development is enhancing Yekaterinburg’s role as a major interregional wholesale and retail trading center. The capital of the Urals currently houses 1,071 grocery stores and 2,660 shops selling non-food items as well as 26 shopping centers. In 2012, seven more malls are expected to open in the city. These are: RADUGA Park Shopping & Entertainment Center at the intersection of Repin St and Leningradskaya St, Panorama Shopping Center at the intersection of Malyshev St and

Sinara Pipe Plant’s net profit (calculated in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) amounted to 153.68m RUR in 2011, the company’s report states. The plant’s revenues rose by 23.4% and reached 27.56bn RUR.

Ukraine’s Consulate-General in Ural Federal District will relocate from Tyumen to Yekaterinburg. This news was announced at Head of Russian Federation Government Vladimir Putin’s meeting with Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovitch, Interfax reports. According to the Ukrainian Ambassador Vladimir Yelchenko, the consulate will move house in about one month. He also said that another Ukrainian consulate-general would be transferred from Vladivostok to Novosibirsk.

Bayer and Ural Pharmaceutical Cluster representatives met to discuss the joint production of pharmaceuticals in Russia. It was announced that the first stage of Bayer and Ural Pharmaceutical Cluster’s cooperation would consist in full-cycle production of Bayer’s medicines using the facilities of Medsintez Plant (one of Cluster’s residents) in Novouralsk. The production will make use of on both the plant’s existing facilities and the new production sites the Cluster is planning to put up. At the moment, the medicines that are expected to be manufactured in Russia are antibiotics Avelox and