‘The criminal suit of IrtyshHydroSpetsStroy (part of Noviy Grad, the developer) was placed with public prosecution bodies of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Region,’ Deputy Public Prosecutor of Khanty-Mansiysk inter-district public prosecution body Rinat Muratov said to UrBC representative. ‘This case is the one of economic nature and requires a very thorough investigation that has to be carried out at the level of the Region,’ Mr Muratov said. IrtyshHydroSpetsStroy (part of Noviy Grad) is accused of doing construction work without proper permissions and papers. ‘The violations mostly have to do

‘Most claims and complaints we get concern the financial services offered by Home Credit and Finance Bank Ltd. Most often, this is the consumer loan business: some banks, for example, give a loan and make a client open an account that costs pretty much the amount of money you borrow to maintain,’ says Ms E. Bogacheva, the expert of Rospotrebnadzor in Sverdlovsk Region, the consumer rights monitoring agency. Home Credit and Finance Bank Ltd. was prosecuted for administrative offence for refusing to provide a loan unless a client pays for the opening and maintenance of a bank account. This

Ural Bank of Sberbank of Russia held a solemn awarding ceremony for the winners of Small Business Leader 2006. The applications for the contest could be submitted between July 1 and September 30, 3006 by small businesses and sole traders who had an account in Sberbank or opened it within the contest period. The competition was held in all the areas where the bank has its subsidiaries – Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Kurgan Regions, and in the Republic of Bashkortostan.

‘It’s not very likely that the new management of Yekaterinburg Meatpacking Plant Ltd. is going to abandon its financial liabilities; however, given the current state of events, the creditors (UralTransBank in particular) will try to get rid of the plant’s debts by selling them,’ General Director of Blagodat Securities Vsevolod Chaschin said to UrBC representative. Due to some significant personnel changes at Yekaterinburg Meatpacking Plant Ltd., its creditors have found themselves in a strait: neither the structure nor the management of the company has been settled yet. Nor is anyone aware of

The Board of Directors of European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Board of Directors of SKB-Bank held meetings on December 12, 2006. ‘This was a very significant event for the banking business of Sverdlovsk Region. The Board of Directors of European Bank for Reconstruction and Development approved of becoming the shareholder of SKB-Bank and decided to give us a line of credit for financing small and medium-scale businesses,’ said Chairman of SKB-Bank Mikhail Khodorovskiy. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development decided to support the bank’s plans to expand its

Russian Copper Company won a tender for the development of Kyzyl-Dere deposit in Akhtinskiy area of Dagestan. The company’s management is currently considering putting up an ore mining and processing plant in this republic, reports the spokesperson for Dagestan’s Representation under the President of the Russian Federation. President of Dagestan Mukhu Aliev met the management of Russian Copper Company in Moscow to discuss the construction plans. According to Mr Aliev, Russian Copper Company will receive some support in exchange for some social development projects and complying with the

Based on the report on the state of the environment and the way environmental factors affected the health of Sverdlovsk Region population in 2005, A.K. Serov Metallurgical Plant was among the companies that dumped the greatest amount of manufacturing water into the local rivers and lands. The plant alone dumped 4.06m cubic meters of manufacturing water. The liquids left over after the ferrous metallurgical production affect the water greatly and lead to its reduced quality everywhere. Thus, the regional rivers and lakes got 202,200 tons of organic substances, 49 tons of mineral oil, 3,143,900

The state of events at Yekaterinburg Meatpacking Plant makes things very complicated for its creditors. ‘From the legal viewpoint, loans are given to a particular legal entity and not to the company’s General Director; this is why this legal entity must be held responsible for their financial liabilities. The banks are trying to minimize the risk of not getting their money back through collaterals and guarantees. However, the credit record of Yekaterinburg meatpacking plant is not very good, so, given the existing risks, the creditors might insist on the early repayment of the debt as they

Based on the report on the state of the environment and the way environmental factors affected the health of Sverdlovsk Region population in 2005, three subsidiaries of UralElectroMed (Nevyanskiy mine, Safyanovsk Copper, and Polymetallic Production) produced 9,910,400 tons of waste varying from class 1 to class 4 in terms of being environmentally hazardous, and only 6,613,900 tons were actually recycled. These subsidiaries hit the region’s top ten non-ferrous metallurgical enterprises in terms of waste production. There are 75 non-ferrous metallurgical enterprises in Sverdlovsk Region

The recent meeting of the committee set up to coordinate the top-priority national projects in Sverdlovsk Region was devoted to the issue of providing some state backup of construction projects. As a result, the Russian Federation Government received applications for state guarantees for 2007 (that may come to over 2bn RUR) regarding three residential areas: Academic project of Yekaterinburg and two areas in Kamensk-Uralskiy and Revda. The new district is to appear in the south-west of Yekaterinburg and is expected to occupy 2,500 hectares of land, with 1,200 hectares covered by forests and

According to the press officer of Ural Airlines, the company is going to hold the Best Flight Attendant competition on December 15, 2006. This event is aimed at motivating and encouraging the personnel whose skills and competence comply with the most demanding professional requirements. The first tour of the competition took place at the end of November when 20 participants were selected among the company’s flight attendants based on their application forms. The second tour of the selection process resulted in choosing 6 candidates by a committee made up of very experiences instructors.

‘The best part of complaints we get about banks have to do with issuance of loans and credit cards. A lot of such claims concern the credit cards provided by Russian Standard and Home Credit Ltd. to their bona fide borrowers,’ reports Chairman of Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee Andrei Artemyev. ‘Home Credit Ltd., for example, gave one of its clients a credit card with a 40,000 RUR limit and informed them that insurance was the obligatory part of the deal. The sum of the insurance payment was withdrawn from this credit card account. In a few months, the client owed the bank something

The quality management system related to steelmaking and steel-rolling production of Metallurgical Industrial Complex of Nizhniy Tagil (part of Evraz Group) received the international ISO 9001:2000 certificate. This certificate arrived from Köln, Germany, where the headquarters of TUF CERT (the global certifying service leader) are situated. The company’s quality management system underwent some technical inspection in September 2006; the auditors from TUF CERT received all the papers and proofs of the company’s full compliance with the international ISO 9001 standards in terms of all

‘The agreements that insurance companies sign with their clients often contain very many additional terms that have to be complied with in order for the event to be classed as insured. This is done in an attempt to let the company avoid paying the money in most cases. The clients do not always read their agreements, and if they do, they may overlook some terms, and end up getting no money. One should always consult a legal expert prior to signing an agreement,’ Chairman of Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee Andrei Artemyev announced at the conference devoted to the committee’s

‘Our organization has drawn up and sent a letter of inquiry to the Russian Federation Ministry of Regional Development concerning Noviy Grad, the local developer. We asked the ministry officials to do something about the state of events on the regional real estate market currently affected by the unfair practices of this builder,’ Vasiliy Ganzhin, the Chairman of Right to a Dwelling, a non-profit organization, said to UrBC representative. ‘Our letter tried to draw the officials’ attention to the fact that Noviy Grad does some construction without proper permission, fails to meet any licensing

‘People normally submit their visa applications needed to go to Europe for Christmas and New Year in advance, that is, in November or October. This is done in order to avoid some unpleasant surprises like this one,’ Vice President of Fond Mira Travel Company Olga Svechkova said about the recent refusal by the French Consulate to accept visa applications. ‘We managed to submit the applications for our clients before this happened three days ago. As everything was done beforehand, these tourists will be able to fly to France for their holidays. Yet those people who started getting their visas

The Federal Antimonopoly Service in Sverdlovsk Region settled the grievance of Mobile TeleSystems Ltd. (aka MTS, the mobile operator) against inappropriate advertisements used by Motive (Yekaterinburg-2000 Ltd.). Mobile TeleSystems Ltd. observed that the phrase ‘We do not raise our tariffs’ used on Motive billboards (shortly after the introduction of the CPP principle) was not truthful as Motive had actually changed the charge for some of its services. From the legal viewpoint, the party to be held responsible for the two operators’ dispute is Region-Svyaz-Contract Ltd., on whose behalf all

‘The power supplying companies can raise investments in three ways: trough raising their tariffs, cutting costs, and reducing interest rates on their loans,’ says General Director of Blagodat Securities Investment Company Vsevolod Chaschin. ‘The first way is obvious but has some limitations regulated by the Regional Power Engineering Committee. The third way is, a matter of fact, well justified as the loan interest rates tend to go down lately. A successfully developing company needs to choose the second way, that is, providing effective and sound management. It is reducing the company’s

The profits of the city of Yekaterinburg exceeded the target figure for 2006 by 3.009bn RUR. According to the Head of Finance and Budget Department of the Council Andrei Koryukov, the main reason for this was effective collection of tax from natural persons, which, in its turn, was caused by increases in salaries and their becoming official rather than otherwise. They also got more money from the single temporary income tax and the land-tax. Investments from the federal and regional budgets (including those intended for top-priority national projects) became another important factor. This

Ural Civil Aviation Plant is now undergoing the ‘author watch’ inspections carried out by Klimov Plant Unitary Enterprise. The latter has intellectual property rights over some of the goods produced by Ural Civil Aviation Plant, so it carries out some inspections on regular basis. Until quite recently, the owner of the rights had no complaints about the quality of the produce. After the beginning of the so-called raiding campaign, however, everything has changed: some unknown people have been producing negative publicity related to the plant and trying to take over the company; at the same