Sverdlovsk Region’s environmental prosecution authorities inspected ZAO Ural Turbine Plant and found a number of legal offenses there. It was detected that the steam- and gas-driven turbine manufacturer has been dumping manufacturing water in the River Iset, through the River Osnovinka and the River Melkovka. The plant also fails to ensure the necessary treatment of hazardous effluents. The authorities determined that the company’s waste treatment plants located in Uchiteley St. in Yekaterinburg do not operate to their full capacity, which is why the plant occasionally dumps waste effluents

The passengers of Ural Airlines who use Domodedovo Airport in Moscow can now order a fish meal for their flight free of charge. The fish menu is available since July 27, 2010 on any of the carrier’s scheduled flights except for those bound for the countries of the CIS. Now Ural Airlines also makes it possible for the passengers traveling to certain destinations to order other kinds of special menus. For one, people flying to Moscow can choose between the traditional main course with starters and a vegetarian meal or a light breakfast. The new service makes fish dishes available as well. This

Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport witnessed a great increase in the number of passengers traveling to Sharm El Sheikh, Hurghada, Bangkok, and Antalya in the first half of 2010. As for the countries of the near abroad, more people flew to Dushanbe, Namangan, Hudzhand, and Tashkent than in the six months of 2009. As far as domestic flights go, Saint Petersburg has become a more popular destination this year.

The trade turnover of YIT declined by 5%, or down to 1.62 billion RUR this year compared with the year 2009. Still, the company’s pre-tax profit grew by 39% and up to ?54.6m against 2009, the concern’s PR Service in Russia informed the media. YIT runs a number of regional offices in Russia, including one in Yekaterinburg. According to the company’s estimates, their trade turnover will go up this year compared with the year 2009; so will their pre-tax profit. ‘It’s obvious that fewer investment homes were built in both Russia and Finland in January-June 2010 against last year. The figures are

The construction of Ural Federal University’s campus on the shores of Lake Shartash will not begin any time before 2013, the university’s Rector Viktor Koksharov announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. The projected campus is to consist of buildings that will house the schools, the student dormitories, a hospital, a library, and an information center as well as some sports facilities. ‘The federal programs do not cover the construction expenses at the moment. This is true not only of our university, this is a general situation for all colleges,’ Koksharov said today. The shores of

The experts of Sverdlovsk Region Hygiene and Epidemiology Center’s consumer rights protection department studied the nature of customer complaints received in the second quarter of 2010 and came to the conclusion that companies and organizations keep violating consumers’ rights. Moreover, the number of the unhappy customers’ petitions against various sole traders and legal entities keeps growing. As far as the financial services sector is concerned, local residents mainly protest against the additional incidental and monthly commissions some banks illegitimately charge for the administration

OAO Koltsovo-Invest’s only stockholder decided not to distribute or pay any share dividend for the year 2009 because the company made no profit last year.

Some representatives of the Pakistani business community are going to meet their Ural counterparts in the Ural Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday, July 26, 2010. It has been announced that Yekaterinburg will host the executives of companies dealing in textiles, food manufacturing, and industrial equipment.

OOO LeMa, a company which sells KIRBY vacuum cleaners, was fined for violating the consumer rights legislation. A Yekaterinburg resident applied to Sverdlovsk Region Hygiene and Epidemiology Center asking for legal advice regarding her clash with OOO LeMa located at 3 Bekhterev St. Off. 6. The said company prepared a demonstration of their product and signed a purchase and sale agreement for KIRBY model Sentra G10E in October 2009. The vacuum cleaner cost 115420 RUR. The presentation took place at night time and contained the information and claims which it was impossible to check or confirm:

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service declared that Coffee House chain appears to violate the existing advertising legislation, RIA Novosti reports. The coffee chain’s primary problem is that their outdoor advertising campaign, dubbed The Mojito Season; the thing is, the advertisements do not warn the potential consumers about the health hazards associated with excessive alcohol intake. This is why Coffee House will have to face an administrative lawsuit and might end up paying between 100,000 RUR and 500,000 RUR in fines. OOO Coffee House & Cappuccino Bar representatives assure reporters

The Russian Federation Federal Antimonopoly Service received Х5 Retail Group’s application; the company would like to buy OAO Kopeika Trading House and its daughter enterprises. The FAS is going to consider the petition within the legally determined time limits. Now Article 33 of the Competition Protection Act states that the Service must make the decision within thirty days. This time limit could be extended if necessary, but for no longer than two more months.

The arrears of wages at some of Chelyabinsk Region’s enterprises are only a temporary phenomenon, the region’s Governor Mikhail Yurevitch said at today’s meeting with the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Chelyabinsk. ‘We do have some arrears of wages in a few cases. The thing is, the arrears are very small and only come to about 15 million RUR; what is more, all these problem enterprises are now under my personal supervision. Our plenipotentiary representative of the Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District is also personally monitoring the situation. So we keep communicating

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Mikhail Yurevitch informed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin about the current situation on the region’s labor market. ‘The unemployment is not as bad now as it used to be, but things still don’t look as good as we’d like. We had 69,000 jobless at the peak of the recession; now the figure comes to 48,000. It’s an impressive drop. The economy keeps getting better, so the unemployment rate keeps going down,’ the Governor said. Mikhail Yurevitch’s only concern is the machine-building industry. ‘We do not have very impressive growth figures here, even though the

The number of complaints placed by the local citizens against various banks has soared over the years 2006-2009, says Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rospotrebnadzor (the federal human wellbeing and consumer rights protection service). For one, the service received 90 written pleas in 2009 compared with only 2 three years earlier. According to Rospotrebnadzor, customers are unhappy with OOO Home Credit & Finance Bank, ZAO Bank Russian Standard, OAO Alfa-Bank, OAO AKB Rosbank, OOO Renaissance Capital Commercial Bank, OAO Bank 24.ru, OOO Rusfinance Bank, and a number of other money-lending

The share dividend determined by OAO Concern Kalina for the company’s stockholders for the first half of 2010 may actually be the same as the one paid in the second half of 2009. The company’s BOD suggested at an EGM on July 22, 2010 that the stockholders set the ordinary share dividend at 10.66 RUR. The same amount of money was paid per share in the second half of 2009. All in all, 103.55 million RUR was directed to dividend payments then.

OOO IKEA Mos, the company that runs MEGA family-style shopping and entertainment centers in Russia, came up with the annual report for the year 2009. It turns out the organization finished the year off with 2.22 billion RUR worth of losses against 3.4 billion RUR worth of losses in 2008, Interfax says. As of June 30, 2010, OOO IKEA Mos ran thirteen MEGA stores in Russia, of which three are based in Moscow and two are located in Saint Petersburg; also, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Nizhniy Novgorod, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don, Novosibirsk, Omsk, and Ufa have one store each.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court ruled on June 30, 2010 that ZAO AMUR car factory based in Novouralsk, Sverdlovsk Region, must undergo bankruptcy proceedings for eighteen months. The ruling was made within the hearing of case А60-12994/2009-С11. Evgeniy Fedotovskikh, a member of Ural Self-Regulatory Organization of Bankruptcy Commissioners, was appointed the company’s trustee in bankruptcy.

A group of German diplomats and architects presented their design of the building which will house Germany’s Consulate-General in Yekaterinburg to the city’s Mayor Arkadiy Chernetskiy, the city council’s press service reports. ‘In the future, a whole consulate block will be put up next to our building, to host the diplomatic representations of many other foreign states. The German consulate is going to be the ‘first robin’ here, which is why we pay so much attention to the design,’ the city council reports. However, Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy found the design that was proposed

OAO Uralvagonzavod Scientific and Production Corporation offered the premises of its Yekaterinburg representation in Pushkin St. for sale. The advertising regarding the sale of 1,640 sq m worth of office space is now placed on the building itself. The enterprise first announced its plans to close down the Yekaterinburg and Lipetsk offices as early as a year ago. Uralvagonzavod then said that a research had been done on the representations’ activity, the functions they performed, and the expenses the plant incurred to keep them running. ‘It could be that, depending on the research findings,

Mobile phone users based in Yekaterinburg started receiving text messages that encourage them to use a certain United Taxi Service. One of these mobile subscribers informed UrBC he never agreed to receive any mobile advertising. Utel’s information center did admit to UrBC that the mobile phone number used for sending out these text messages was registered with their company, in Perm Territory. The taxi service refused to provide any comments. Illegal m-advertising is practiced increasingly often in Sverdlovsk Region these days. For one, Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly