‘The company managed to commission all the buildings that had to be finished in 2009. The last buildings got commissioned on December 31, 2009, in fact. We do admit, however, that the deadline for the commissioning had to be met six months ago,’ Stroy-Accent real estate expert Natalya Derbusheva informed an UrBC reporter. ZAO Stroy-Accent deals in putting up and selling residential real estate in Verkhnyaya Pyshma, Sverdlovsk Region. The builder announced as early as June 2009 that they might have to put off the commissioning of their buildings. ‘This delay actually stems from the

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps processing the claim laid by Bank24.ru against UralTransBank regarding the 40-million-ruble debt. The court session has been scheduled for January 11, 2010. It is reported that the plaintiff wants to be paid the sum resulting from a promissory note issued by UralTransBank on July 27, 2009; the note was to be paid on demand but no earlier than October 27, 2009. In addition to this debt, Bank24.ru insists on getting the interest charged between October 27, 2009 and October 30, 2009 and further on. The defendant, in its turn, claims that the promissory

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is still looking into Avtofrans bankruptcy case. The demand that the company be declared bankrupt was actually placed with the court by UKS-Invest. The plaintiff insisted that Avtofrans owed it 5.871 million RUR for the jobs UKS-Invest had completed within the two parties’ construction financing and contractor-controlling agreement. The existence of this debt was officially confirmed by the court on July 30, 2009. As a matter of fact, Avtofrans admits that they do owe money to the plaintiff. ‘As far as the building at 3 Vysotskiy St. in Yekaterinburg is

Deja-Invest is no longer a shareholder of Gardis Production Enterprise. Gardis deals in recycling of ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal. Prior to this, Deja-Invest used to own 100% of Gardis shares that it bought in June 2008.

A rock burst at UC RUSAL’s Krasnaya Shapochka mine left one worker badly hurt. According to Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Ministry of Emergencies, the thirty-two-year-old man had some head injuries and collar bone fractures and was taken to municipal clinic of Severouralsk. ‘The northern Urals are a seismogenic area. Severouralsk bauxite mine’s rock burst monitoring and prevention service registers over 3,000 instances of subterranean earthquakes at the local bauxite deposit every year,’ UC RUSAL official representative Roman Lukichev says.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court considered the claim laid by VUZ-Bank (the asset of Life Group) against the regional division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog). The bank was trying to contest Rospotrebnadzor’s order to stop violating consumers’ rights issued on October 15, 2009. The agency issued this order for the bank after VUZ-Bank had been inspected by Rospotrebnadzor’s experts following a customer complaint. The subject of the inspection was whether the bank actually charged an extra fee for the administration of a loan offered to a customer. ‘The loan agreement

BINBANK’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary placed an application with Yekaterinburg Verkh-Isetskiy district court. BINBANK asks that a lost 36-million-ruble promissory note (UM 113753) issued to Uralfinprombank should be declared invalid. At the same time, the bank would like to restore its promissory notes rights later. This news has been announced via Oblastnaya Gazeta. The note was issued on July 14, 2009 and was to be paid on demand but no earlier than March 1, 2010. It was suggested that the promissory note holder should place an application with the court in order to declare its rights over the

The Russian Federation President Dmitriy Medvedev gave state awards to the representatives of the Russian scientific, cultural, artistic, and business communities. The ceremony took place in the Kremlin’s Yekaterininskiy Hall. The former Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel was given the Order of Merit for the Motherland, 1st degree; opera singer Elena Obraztsova was given the Order of Merit for the Motherland, 2nd degree, the director of the Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovskiy was given the Order of Merit for the Motherland, 3d degree, theatre and movie actor Mikhail Boyarskiy and

The Board of Directors of TGK-9, the heat and power supplier, met on December 24, 2009 to close down some of the company’s subsidiaries, namely, Permteplosbyt, Sverdlovteplosbyt, Syktyvkarskiye Teploviye Seti, and Ukhtinskiye Teploviye Seti. In fact, Sverdlovteplosbyt was set up at the time to facilitate the purchase of heat energy from all the suppliers connected to the heating networks and the sale of this energy to end users at a fixed price.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court resumed the hearing of the claim laid by the Bank of Russia’s Main Division in Sverdlovsk Region (on behalf of the Central Bank of Russia as a whole) against Ural Innovational Commercial Bank (UIC Bank) and Alexei Bagaryakov, Galina Devonina, and Nadezhda Zykova on December 28, 2009. The claim is related to how the defendants applied the consequences stemming from the invalidity of some legal transactions. The plaintiff insists that the transaction through which Alexei Bagaryakov sold UIC Bank’s 19.9% and 5.1% shareholdings to Galina Devonina and Nadezhda

The Russian Federation Federal Financial Market Service decided to annul the licenses of some professional securities market players, including that of Ufa-based Center-Invest Investment Company (the license allowed the company to perform brokerage and dealing operations and handle securities management) and that of Yekaterinburg-based Bank24.ru (the license allowed the bank to perform depositary transactions).

‘The Urals’ real estate management market is still non-existent due to lack of demand. All of Yekaterinburg’s management companies were set up by the builders themselves at the time. So the management companies’ activity is not even a business as such, it’s just that the recession has forced many developers to halt their construction projects and to switch to making money through the management of the buildings they already have,’ R-management Management Company’s General Director Alexei Maltsev said to UrBC. In the meantime, the Czech OKIN FACILITY RU that deals in real estate maintenance

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin declared that the medical workers who’d helped the victims of Perm-based Lame Horse Club fire accident should be given a premium. The Governor’s thanks and the 35,000-ruble premium will be directed to thirty-one health professionals. These are mainly the medical superintendents and doctors from Chelyabinsk Region clinical hospital, Chelyabinsk Municipal Hospital’s burn center, and emergency medicine center as well as psychologists from Semya rehabilitation center. The premiums cover thirteen doctors who actually flew to Perm to help the people

It has been detected that Bank24.ru violated Article 5 (part 7) of the Federal Advertising Act, Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service claims. Marina Yusupova, the spokesperson for the division, told UrBC that the bank’s offense consisted in using ad banners that offered the customers a free opening of a bank account. ‘We received a complaint from OOO ASM Resource that stated Bank24.ru had placed an ad banner next to the bank’s additional office at 56 Lenin St. The ad said, ‘A free settlement account for legal entities and sole traders.’ However, ASM Resource

40% of Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport’s shares might be handed over to Sverdlovsk Region, Vladimir Levchenko (who seeks office of Sverdlovsk Region Public Property Management Minister) said at an extraordinary meeting of Sverdlovsk Region Duma. At the moment, the airport’s major shareholders are OAO Koltsovo-Invest (which owns 51.9% of shares) and the Federal Property Management Agency (which has a 46.08% shareholding). Levchenko explained the region’s Governor Alexander Misharin had already talked the matter over with the Russian Federation Transport Minister Igor Levitin. Vladimir

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is about to consider the claim laid by Sverdlovsk Region Public Property Management Ministry against Metro Cash & Carry. The ministry believes the defendant’s agreement related to purchase of a land allotment is invalid. The preliminary court hearing was scheduled for December 24, 2009. Metro runs two stores in Yekaterinburg at the moment. One of them is located at 21 Sibirskiy Tract-2 (a relief road); the other one can be found at 85 Metallurgov St. The company operates forty-eight shops throughout Russia altogether.

Following an inspection of UralTransBank by Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities and their investigative committee, criminal proceedings were instituted against one of the bank’s executives. The accusations (of fraud) are based on Article 159 (part 4) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code, the spokesperson for the prosecution authorities reports. For one, the authorities believe that the director of Ural Transport Bank’s Nizhniy Tagil subsidiary Pavel Mukhachev transferred 95 million RUR worth of promissory notes to the former heads of Baranchinskiy Mechanical Plant Grigory

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court sustained the claim laid by OAO AKB Rosbank against Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Enterprise. The defendant will now have to pay the plaintiff over 167 million RUR. The court proceedings were resumed after the results of the handwriting comparison had been received. The defendant insisted that its creditor’s claims were ungrounded because the date when the promissory notes for December 2008-April 2009 were signed and the signature of the company’s General Director couldn’t be authentic as the GD was allegedly away on business on that particular

Vladimir and Andrei Frolov have announced via a number of online forums that they are looking for some businesses willing to test their new e-banking product. The heads of a newly founded bank even insist that their testers have some experience of working with e-banking products (preferably Bank Severnaya Kazna’s Internet Bank) and use the product as both a business account administrator and a private individual. ‘We expect some constructive cooperation and a patient attitude towards the hypothetical glitches,’ a E1 forum user acting on behalf of Andrei Frolov says. Vladimir Frolov’s online

‘The year 2009 has been more or less stable and quiet for our company. Some of our key customers never let us down, but, unfortunately, a number of others, like Uralmashzavod, were not so reliable,’ Heating Energy Sales Director of TGK-9 Elena Malakhova said at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘As far as the regional towns and cities are concerned, Yekaterinburg and Berezovskiy councils paid their bills every month, maintained good payment level, and influenced their non-paying management companies effectively. However, things are still not as bright in Kamensk-Uralskiy, Krasnoturinsk, or