In Yekaterinburg, office rent has been rising slower than the acquisition prices over the last few years, with average rent growth coming to 10% to 15% a year, reports Yarmarka Real Estate. Yarmarka’s experts say last year was like this as well since the average rent grew 11% and amounted to 860 RUR per square meter at the beginning of 2007. Last year, renting offices in office centers and business centers became 17% and 20% more expensive, respectively, and reached the point of 870 RUR and 1,015 RUR per square meter in January 2007. The price gap between class C offices and offices based in

According to one of Ural Airlines’ employees, the company’s general director received a letter from Deputy GD of Koltsovo airport informing the former that the airport cannot service any transit passengers in the simplified mode. Koltsovo cancelled the system that skipped the in-between flights check-ins and baggage claims. A transit passenger now has to get off in the intermediary airport, get the luggage, check in, and get on the plane again. The airport says the reasons for this are the increased number of flights in the summer and lack of space. The airline employee says this system is

‘I am finally dealing with HydroSpetsStroy’s bankruptcy proceedings now. I am currently looking into the papers in the builder’s office at 13 Vosmoye Marta St.,’ says Olga Rushitskaya, acting trustee in bankruptcy of HydroSpetsStroy Ltd. (general contractor of Noviy Grad, the local developer). ‘The company’s creditors have already appointed me trustee in bankruptcy, so this issue is to be discussed in Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration on April 9, 2007,’ she says. Before she used help of law-enforcement officers, Ms Rushitskaya had been trying to get in the builder’s office for a few days

Ural Bank of Sberbank of Russia conducted a prize-winning lottery for its customers; seven travel tours were at stake. In order to become a participant, one had to open a bank account in Sverdlovsk, Kurgan, or Chelyabinsk Regions or in Bashkortostan between January 22 and March 18, 2007. There had to be at least 30,000 RUR ($1,000, ?1,000) in the bank account on March 19, 2007, and the account had to be valid for at least two years. 25,000 customers were thus eligible to participate; the computer randomly chose the names of the winners, who will be able to decide on the date and destination

Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy met city district heads to make sure all the cleanup activities in the streets and backyards were performed thoroughly. According to the spokesperson for the city council, the mayor also looked into how the problems revealed in the course of site inspections had been dealt with. The Mayor said the cleanup process had to be completed very soon, so this and the next week should be devoted to finishing up with the streets and sidewalks. Some districts will have to catch up with the others in terms of de-cluttering the streets or in terms of handling the

Sverdlovsk Region traffic wardens’ performance was assessed by the regional public prosecution bodies; a lot of violations were found, including cases of wardens getting engaged in profit-making activity. In Asbest, for example, a criminal suit was filed against an officer who was selling cars imported from abroad. In Slobodo-Turinskiy area, one of the local officers turned out to be the co-founder of an agricultural co-operative. Some employees happened to be direct subordinates of their close relatives. In addition, traffic wardens would sometimes illegally allow placing advertising

Former Operational Director Ekaterina Golyanova was appointed Deputy Chairperson of SKB-Bank; the decision was taken by the Board of Directors. ‘This new appointment has to do with the bank’s continuous attempts to expand the business and build up infrastructure as well as to improve our operational performance. Our assets doubled last year, and so did the number of offices and subsidiaries. 30 new points of sale were set up in 2006. Both the retail and business areas of the bank’s activity have been developing rapidly, new products and technologies are being introduced all the time. Ms

Ural Customs Administration officers revealed a case of smuggling in the airport of Nizhnevartovsk: a man flying to Azerbaijan on a Nizhnevartovsk-Baku flight failed to declare $11,000. The officers managed to disclose the trick and, since the offender never filled a declaration and did not indicate the sum of money he was taking along (which is obligatory for any amount of cash), he will have to undergo a criminal suit and might get up to five years in prison for smuggling. The decision, however, rests with the court. The investigation is currently in progress; the money was withdrawn and

Federal Transport Surveillance Agency completed the investigation of UTair Airlines related to the crash of the company’s TU 134 plane in the airport of Samara on March 17, 2007. The investigation was mainly conducted in the company’s headquarters in Tyumen as well as in the regional offices in Surgut, Khanty-Mansiysk, Syktyvkar, and Ufa. After it found some violations in the way the flights were organized, the Agency imposed flight performance limitations and issued a warning. UTair’s TU 134 pilots without a sufficient experience in the capacity of an aircraft commander were not permitted to

President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin appointed former First Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region Railways Valeriy Fomin the company’s acting Head, First Vice President of Russian Railways Vadim Morozov announced at the meeting of company’s Board with heads of five railway companies based in the Urals and in Western Siberia in Yekaterinburg. The Board of Directors of Russian Railways decided at a meeting in Moscow on March 20, 2007 that Head of Sverdlovsk Region Railways Shevket Shaidullin should resign. There were no official comments on the reasons for his resignation, though Gudok

Expert Ural magazine published the rating of Ural Region’s largest banks in terms of net wealth in 2006 on March 26, 2007. The rating was compiled by Expert Ural analytical center. Bank24.ru went up 7 positions compared to 2005 and thus became the region’s 23d largest bank. It also hit 8th among all Yekaterinburg banks, outstripping Koltso Urala, MDM Bank Ural, Grancombank, UralFinPromBank and a number of others. The bank’s assets went up 82% (from 2,725 million RUR to 4,966 million) last year. Its capital reached the point of 457 million, which exceeds the figures for the beginning of 2006

‘Mismanagement of litter and industrial waste is one of the most commonly occurring environmental offenses. There are almost no recycling facilities within the area, so land fills and cesspits around Yekaterinburg are gradually becoming a life-threatening litter circle that smothers the city. The same is true of most other towns,’ says Sverdlovsk Region Environmental Prosecutor Kirill Ershov. ‘So far, our only achievement in this field has been the launch of a separating assembly line in Pervouralsk. It took us so long to set everything up, however, that the equipment became outdated by the

Acting trustee in bankruptcy of HydroSpetsStroy Ltd. (general contractor of Noviy Grad, the developer) Olga Rushitskaya tried to enter the company’s office at 13 Vosmoye Marta St. on April 5, 2007, but former Noviy Grad CEO Yuri Repeta and director of Tamasi Mr. Gogia as well as Noviy Grad security guards prevented her from going in. Ms Rushitskaya had to sign a contract with the general contractor, who removed the latch from the builder’s fire exit to make it possible for Ms Rushitskaya to enter the office. The law-enforcement officers and the prosecutor who arrived at the scene stated

Sverdlovsk Region deputies adopted amendments to public road development project for 2006 – 2008 on April 5, 2007. Deputy Chairman of Committee for Industrial, Agricultural, and Environmental Management Policies Nikolai Krupin said the project would get 8.05 billion RUR rather than the 7 billion initially planned for 2007. Besides, the project is liable to changes throughout the year.

Sverdlovsk Region deputies approved of the legislation on public property management within the region and on privatization process in 2007 in the course of their thirty-fourth meeting. According to Deputy Chairman of Committee for Industrial, Agricultural, and Environmental Management Policies Nikolai Krupin, the region was going to spend more on repair and maintenance as well as on buying the shares of open joint stock companies.

The investigation conducted by the public prosecution authorities of Ural Federal District revealed that the local division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state natural resources watchdog) violated the civil service law. Despite the legislation and a number of presidential decrees, Rosprirodnadzor turned out not to be verifying data produced by their job applicants, which means quite a few overall conscientious workers keep violating legal norms and regulations. The case of Mr. Kiryushkin is but one instance: prior to becoming Deputy Director for Control and Coordination, he was founder and owner of

The Federal Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance Service (aka Rosselkhoznadzor) introduced temporary limits on the supplies of poultry from a Belgium-based BE E 2001 EEG/EG on April 4, 2007 after salmonella was found in some Belgian meat, says Rosselkhoznadzor’s press officer. The Service asked the Belgian food inspection authorities to look into the causes of this meat getting infected and to take steps to make sure this does not happen again. Rosselkhoznadzor also limited import of meat from German DAZ 917 EWG since the samples of ground chicken and pork contained salmonella as well.

Sverdlovsk Region deputies approved of changes made to the regional budget for 2007 on April 5, 2007. The changes were originally proposed by Governor Eduard Rossel and consist in spending the additional revenues (13,949,993,600 RUR) on socially important programs (37%), support of municipalities (42%), extra healthcare investments (additional 2.3 million RUR), additional financing of boarding schools and orphanages (330 million RUR worth of subsidies), and 42% pay rises for civil servants (extra 2.4 billion RUR). 195 million will be used to compensate the war veterans for their communication

The 9th Ural Professional Tax Forum took place in Yekaterinburg on April 5, 2007. The forum, coordinated by Ardashev and Partners, a law firm, was devoted to new techniques in tax management, ‘scheme-finding’, and businesses that aim to reach their goals at the expense of scrupulousness. This agenda was brought about by the major challenge facing the public tax officers at the moment: having to eradicate dishonest tax schemes and to create favorable conditions for those willing to do transparent business at the same time. This means an entrepreneur’s awareness of new tax administration

‘Violations by builders were our major problem last year, which mainly has to do with large-scale construction in Yekaterinburg. Unfortunately, this has had some negative side effects, including more environmental offenses,’ says Sverdlovsk Region Environmental Prosecutor Kirill Ershov. ‘Developers would often begin building without a timely examination conducted by a committee of environmental experts, and only legalized all the papers at our demand in the course of construction. Sometimes they would ignore the need for getting consent of a number of regulatory bodies, and often cut down