Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Anatoly Gredin held a meeting of a work team created to support the regional enterprises and organizations’ business activity. The agenda of the meeting covered issues related to collecting more taxes into the region’s consolidated budget, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Government reports. For one, the meeting participants discussed the state of events at Vanadium, Kachkanar-based ore mining and processing enterprise, whose profits plunged by nearly ten times in 2009. The enterprise’s Managing Director Mikhail Batuyev said the profits had dropped

A few days ago, Interpol officers detained Alexei Kalinichenko, the man suspected of creating a pyramid scheme and stealing over a billion RUR from 4,000 Russian citizens; he is originally from Yekaterinburg. The news of Kalinichenko’s arrest was announced by Valeriy Gorelykh, the director of Sverdlovsk Region Internal Affairs Administration’s press center. It has been reported that the suspected fraudster has been detained in Italy before; Russia insisted on his extradition, and the Italian court ruled in favor of this demand, whereupon Kalinichenko managed to escape from home arrest. ‘The

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) isn’t going to sell OAO Belon, the energy sector enterprise (MMK currently owns 82.6% of Belon’s shares through Onarbay Enterprises Ltd). ‘MMK has no plans to sell the enterprise and is actually quite interested in its further development. This is part of Belon and MMK’s joint development strategy,’ MMK informed Interfax referring to the statement made by MMK Vice President for Strategic Development and Metallurgy Rafkat Takhautdinov. The misunderstanding apparently occurred when Kommersant reported earlier that Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is to hold a session on Bank24.ru vs. UralTransBank on February 10, 2010. The plaintiff insists on being paid 40,031,667 RUR worth of debt resulting from a number of promissory notes (096441, 096638, 096445, and 096640) issued by UralTransBank on July 27, 2009. The notes are to be paid on demand but no earlier than October 27, 2009. What is more, the plaintiff claims some interest should be paid for the period from October 27, 2009 to October 30, 2009 and then further on till the day the court’s ruling has been made. Marketinvest, OOO Estate, and OOO

The shareholders of Deja-Invest decided at a recent extraordinary general meeting in Yekaterinburg to have the company’s General Director Alexander Kolesnikov resign. The authority and powers of the company’s sole executive body were vested with Kontakt Group (the management company) on January 15, 2010.

The investigative authorities of Severouralsk, Sverdlovsk Region are now looking into the causes of UC RUSAL Severouralsk bauxite mine (SUBR) worker’s death. The fatal accident occurred at Kalyinskaya mine on January 15, 2010. The victim was a forty-five-year-old shaft man. The scene of the accident has already been examined by the investigative team; it was detected that on that day the miners were doing some preparatory work and drilled over the mine face; the shaft man was within the ore bunker boundaries, that is, between 1,058 and 1,044 meters below the ground. A rock mass movement

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court will hear the claim laid by the Russian Federation Federal Tax Service’s Yekaterinburg Verhk-Isetskiy district division against Aston Construction Company on January 18, 2010. The plaintiff wants the defendant to be declared bankrupt. The tax authorities claim that Aston hasn’t been able to pay them 953,880 RUR for more than three months now. The plaintiff’s application was placed with the court on August 21, 2009.

‘Uralmashzavod is Russia’s heavy engineering giant, yet the drilling machinery production was closed down in 2002. It was rather fortunate that Gazprombank started cooperating with the enterprise last year when the recession forced nearly all the production shops to stay idle. The plant is now given a unique opportunity to come back on the market and rebuild its know-hows, namely, the production of drilling machinery, metallurgical equipment, carnage, and many other things,’ Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin said in the course of his visit to Uralmashzavod. ‘The things I have

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is to resume the hearing of the claim laid by Maxi Group’s minority shareholder Nikolai Maksimov against Maxi Group and Nizhneserginskiy metal products plant on February 12, 2010, the spokesperson for the court informed UrBC. The plaintiff insists that two of Maxi Group’s sole executive body’s decisions be declared invalid. The decisions concern voting for Point 5 (the approval of the plant’s new Charter) at Nizhneserginskiy metal products plant’s AGM in 2008 and the resolution regarding Point 5 (the approval of the plant’s new Charter) taken at the plant’s

Evraz Group cut its steel production by 13.5% in 2009 compared to 2008, that is, down to 15.3 million tons, the company reports. On the other hand, the production of steel increased by .3% (up to 4.3 million tons) in the last quarter of 2009 compared to the third quarter.

The net profit of Gazprombank (calculated in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) plunged by 2.3 times down to 9 billion RUR in the year 2009, the bank’s report states. This significant drop in profit resulted from the need to pay a much greater income tax in 2009. What is more, the company received less impressive dividends from its daughter enterprise investments and foreign currency transactions.

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service keeps looking into Case 120 involving OOO Alcor-C (L’Etoile cosmetics chain store). The company is suspected of violating Article 18 (part 1) of the Federal Advertising Act. Namely, the company is believed to be sending out text messages with advertisements without the phone number users’ written assent. ‘The ad hoc committee first discussed the case on January 12, 2010, but its proper handling had to be postponed because the defendant failed to produce the necessary papers,’ Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal

The value of Petrokommerz Commercial Bank’s assets decreased by 11.66% in the year 2009. The bank reports this drop has to do with the need to pay back external loans and those obtained from the Bank of Russia). Also, the net debt owed to the company declined as well.

The financial performance of Bank Severnaya Kazna (Alfa-Bank’s asset) went from bad to worse throughout the year 2009. For one, the bank’s asset value declined by 53%, from 43,637,835,000 RUR on January 1, 2009 down to 20,417,266,000 RUR on January 1, 2010. The asset value decreased by 21.8% (or 5,691,177,000 RUR) in December 2009 alone. The bank reports its assets depreciated because of the need to meet its liabilities to both businesses and private individuals and to pay off interbank loans. Also, most of the bank’s loan recipients paid off their loans. Finally, the bank had to assign its

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Bank24.ru against Ural Transport Bank. The court session scheduled for January 14, 2010 is to be devoted to the bank’s demand that UralTransBank pay the plaintiff 50 million RUR. Marketinvest, OOO Estate, and OOO Specter are involved in the case as third parties. The sum in question is reported to stem from a number of promissory notes (096601, 096602, 096603, 096604, and 096605) issued by UralTransBank on July 21, 2009. The notes are to be paid on demand but no earlier than November 20, 2009. There are also notes

AdMe, an advertising online portal, announced recently that MTS (one of Russia’s Big Three mobile operators) and MTS’s advertising partner MindShare were trying to exert some pressure on it. AdMe representatives report the two-day harassment started when the company compared MTS logo to a ball. For one, MTS was unhappy with AdMe’s news headline that read, ‘MTS shows another ball.’ Meanwhile, the Russian federal TV channels are now broadcasting ads on MTS special winter offer called MTS Bonus. At some point, two logos (each of which has an ovoid shape) appear in these ads. The online

Subaru Motors LLC’s Yekaterinburg dealer still hasn’t come to full understanding with Evgeniy Rossol. ‘I have signed an agreement with the company’s management, and the terms suit me okay. As for the actual implementation of these terms, everything will become clear on February 1, 2010. So far, things are still pending,’ Rossol said to UrBC. The Yekaterinburg dweller bought a Subaru Forester at Subaru Yekaterinburg Nikko Motors show room on September 30, 2008. He then placed a billboard next to the show room entrance that listed all the shortcomings of this car and all the problems he’d had

It is reported that the difference between the interest Bank24.ru declares to charge on its loans-through-bank-cards and the interest the bank actually charges on this loan type comes to as much as 14.5%, UmnyeDengi.ru’s experts claim. This online project was set up by Pro-Credit, an e-broker; according to the website, Bank24.ru insists that the annual interest comes to 23% but in fact the loan maintenance costs the borrowing parties over 37.5% a year. The e-broker’s experts say this is the largest overcharge detected among Russian banks within the scope of their investigation. No other bank

‘DHL, the express delivery service, failed to bring a batch of personal passenger tickets meant for use in public transport to Yekaterinburg on time,’ Yekaterinburg council’s press service announced, referring to the claims made by the General Director of Information Network Pavel Vedernikov. ‘We’ve designed a schedule for transferring these Ye-Cards to the electronic ticket retail outlets. On Monday, January 11, over 7,000 cards were to have been transferred from Moscow to Yekaterinburg by DHL. The cards were to have arrived to our I-Set office by 10:30 AM on Tuesday. However, DHL sent me a

Bank24.ru now only handles online payment transactions until 8 PM, the bank’s website says. The organization explains they have to devote some time to the installation and launch of a new banking system and assures its customers these changes are only temporary. ‘We kindly request that you use the Money Back system to make up for the temporarily decreased quality of service,’ the bank’s official statement runs. In addition to this, Bank24.ru stopped accepting any payments made to OOO Olympus NSP (AKADO-Yekaterinburg) for the time being.