Russia’s Federal Financial Markets Service nullified the license of ZAO Gazinvest which allowed the company to deal in brokerage and dealing operations as well as to perform securities transactions, The Service reports the license was annulled because the company turned out to be guilty of repeated offense of the Russian Federation securities legislation; the violations occurred over the course of one year and consisted, among other things, in failing to comply with the regulatory legal acts issued by the federal executive body in charge of the securities market.

Khanty-Mansiyskiy Retirement Fund, a non-state retirement fund, will soon be headed by Alexei Okhlopkov, RBC daily reports. Prior to his new appointment, Okhlopkov was Vice President of Stalfond for a few years; in 2009, he left the company for Severstal, where he supervised the organization’s construction and development projects and was in charge of some other things as well. When asked about the challenges set for him by the retirement fund’s founders, Alexei Okhlopkov said his primary duty was to make sure the investments in the business yield stable and significant profit; he also has to

‘Judging by our semiannual report, deposits are still some of the most popular banking products at the moment. The customers are now paying attention not only to the interest rate level, the terms of capitalization, and the deposit period, but also to some other things like the topping-up option, for example, or the possibility to take some money out of one’s deposit account. This is why we have moved further in terms of deposit offer improvements and introduced e-management of deposits. Our customers can now freely control their savings remotely,’ says Vice President and Retail Services

Vysokovoltniy Soyuz concern manufactured and shipped the machinery for the new power substation 110/35/10 kv Truskavets-91 of OAO Lvovoblenergo onto the plant. The concern’s experts performed all the procedures related to the production and testing of all the high-voltage gear that constitutes the machine. The agreement for the delivery of the substation equipment was signed in February 2010; under this contract, the concern was to deliver a 110 kv outdoor switch-gear, a substation control center combined with KPRZ-10 factory-assembled switch-gear with fourteen KU-10C cells. All the machinery

Russian national Alexander Sichinskiy, 47, was recently extradited from Prague to Moscow by Interpol officers. Sichinskiy’s charges are based on Article 174-1 (part 2) and Article 165 (part 3) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code: damage to property through deception or breach of trust and money-laundering, the press officer of Interpol’s Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs division reports. Alexander Sichinskiy was placed on Interpol’s international ‘wanted’ list in August 2009 upon the initiative of Chelyabinsk Region’s Internal Affairs Administration and was detained in the Czech

Yekaterinburg’s subsidiary of Rostra Insurance Company was the organization that won the tender coordinated by Sverdlovsk Region’s car fleet, a state-run enterprise. As a result, the two parties signed an obligatory automobile liability insurance agreement that covered 281 cars from the regional government’s fleet, the spokesperson for Rostra says. There were eight other companies participating in the tender: EnergoGarant, Moscow Joint Stock Insurance Company, VSK, Ingosstrakh, AlfaStrakhovaniye, Yugoria, ZhASO, and Rosgosstrakh.

Perm Territory and Sverdlovsk Region are planning to hand a portion of Perm-Serov-Khanty-Mansiysk-Surgut-Nizhnevartovsk-Tomsk highway over to the Russian Federation, Perm’s regional server says. For one, the Kama Region is going to give away a 200-kilometer portion of the tract through Chusovoy, Gornozavodsk, and Teplaya Gora up to Sverdlovsk Region’s border. The last two stretches of the road that ensured a direct link through Perm Territory and Sverdlovsk Region to Khanty-Mansiyskiy Autonomous Region were commissioned in 2009.

ZAO Raiffeisenbank’s Supervisory Board decided to close down a number of the company’s offices. For one, this means the bank’s branches in Surgut and Zlatoust will stop operating between the third quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011. The bank explains the decision was taken with the wish to enhance their regional network’s efficiency in mind; the company also wants to expand the range of services offered in its provincial representations.

Counterfeit Sochi Olympics 2014, a multi-purpose law-enforcement campaign on counteracting piracy, has come to an end in Yekaterinburg. For over a week, the local police were trying to detect and counteract offenses related to manufacturing, storage, transportation, and sales of pirated items which illegitimately bore the Olympic Games symbols and logos, says Sverdlovsk Region Internal Affairs Administration’s press service. 4,530 counterfeit items worth over 470,000 RUR were confiscated altogether, including 2,480 items with the Olympics and Paralympics symbols worth 274,000 RUR.

The net loss of Nizhneserginskiy metal goods plant (the asset of Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works/LNMK) reached 673.384 million RUR in the second quarter of 2010, the company’s financial report (compiled in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) states. A quarter earlier, the plant’s net loss came to 1,264,313,000 RUR. ‘The company’s net loss is still the result of overwhelming debt burden,’ NLMK reports. At the same time, the metal goods plant could build up on sales volumes and average prices due to the seasonal surge in demand. This, in its turn, was the cause of a 47%

The Central Yekaterinburg Department of Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) has asked the heads of Yekaterinburg-based supermarkets and stores to call off their batches of Mozzarrella in lake cheese produced by Milchwerk Jager GmbH&Co KG numbered 21 to 145, inclusively. Rospotrebnadzor’s press officer explained to UrBC that a batch of German Mozzarrella in lake cheese by Milchwerk Jager GmbH&Co KG that did not meet the hygienic norms in terms of its organoleptic characteristics had been detected in Italy and Germany.

The net profit of Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) decreased by 47.64% in the second quarter of 2010 compared with the second quarter of 2009. According to the company’s financial report (compiled in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards), the enterprise’s net profit amounted to 11,688,153,000 RUR over the given period, whereas a year earlier, the company made 22,322,948,000 RUR worth of profits. On the other hand, NLMK’s profits were better in the second quarter of the year than in the first one, as the said net profit figures were 4.4 times greater than in the first

The Federal Financial Markets Service of the Russian Federation imposed fines on three banks – VTB 24, the International Industrial Bank (MezhPromBank), and Bank Société Générale Vostok. The fines amounted to 700,000 RUR, 700,000 RUR, and 500,000 RUR, respectively, and were imposed for the banks’ failure to comply with the Service’s orders regarding the incongruence of their internal audit rules with the current legislation, Kommersant reports. The newspaper says the banks are obliged to train all of their employees in terms of mechanisms in which the law on counteracting money-laundering is

Starting August 4, 2010, Ural Airlines runs three official website addresses: the traditional one of www.uralairlines.com has been complemented with http://уральскиеавиалинии.рф/ and http://уральские-авиалинии.рф/. ‘Our airline was the first to react promptly to the new Cyrillic domains option. Our regular customers have already added to their Favorites our traditional address, but users from some new regions that were only introduced to Ural Airlines in 2010 can now choose the address which suits them best. As a rule, Cyrillic domain names are more popular with the elderly people who are

The court of appeals did not sustain the petition laid by Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg regarding Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court’s ruling. Now the arbitration court stated that the orders made by Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service were both legitimate and well-grounded, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service says. The airport’s offense consisted in setting monopolistically high prices for providing telescopic passageways or an air bridge and for the on-board meals between January 1, 2009 and July

Sverdlovsk Region was the third most active car-buying part of Russia in the first half of 2010, preceded only by Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The share of new foreign cars sold on the Russian market to customers based in Sverdlovsk Region came to 3.6% of all the sales, or 18,800 automobiles, Avtostat Agency’s analysts state in their monthly report on the country’s car market. Tyumen Region, with its 3% share of the Russian market (15,500 automobiles), and Krasnodar Territory, with its 2.9% share (15,200 automobiles), thus proved the fourth and the fifth most active automobile-buying regions.

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service is going to keep investigating the earlier postponed case No. 80 involving BNP Paribas and IncorMedia in Yekaterinburg. The two organizations are suspected of violating Article 18 of the Advertising Act through sending out advertisements via text messaging without the mobile phone number subscribers’ consent.

A session of Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service regarding the earlier postponed case No.45 was held in Yekaterinburg today. The case involves OAO Koltsovo Airport; the company is suspected of violating Article 10 (part 1) of the Competition Protection Law by refusing to store the airlines' jet fuel in its Yekaterinburg-based filling terminals for no good economic or technological reason. However, the demand for such a service is high. In addition, the airport appears to have no economic or technological grounds to back out of agreements with TZK Ural. Now

Technosila, Russia’s third largest electronic goods and white goods chain store, placed an application regarding the insolvency of OOO SV Group with the court. According to Kommersant, SV Group is the flagship enterprise of both Technosila and a number of other businesses owned by brothers Vyacheslav and Viktor Zaitsev. OOO Technosila is undergoing bankruptcy proceedings at the same time. The company’s debts total to 8.8 billion RUR, with its asset value reaching about 7.9 billion RUR. In fact, Technosila currently operates three hypermarkets in Yekaterinburg, namely, in Greenwich, Fan Fan,

Expert RA, a rating agency, reports that ZAO Uralprivatbank’s business solvency rating has been called off due to the expiration of its term and the bank’s refusal to have it renewed. Prior to the cancellation, the bank’s rating came to В++ (‘Acceptable solvency level’). Expert RA reports ZAO UralPrivatBank is an organization specializing in loans to legal entities and private individuals and offering cash management and settlement operations within Sverdlovsk Region. As of July 1, 2010, the bank’s assets (calculated in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) amounted to 1,929