The founder of Global Gaming Expo (GGE) Alexei Kalinichenko is not going to be extradited to Russia yet, even though the Supreme Court of Italy sustained the Russian authorities’ claim to this extent. A former member of Bank24.ru Board of Directors, Kalinichenko dealt in trading on Forex foreign exchange market through an offshore Livingston Investment and through Bank24.ru. The money needed for the trading operations was attracted through a number of ad hoc firms, including GGE. The trader promised its customers an annual yield of 30% to 200%. The company stopped paying its investors in

Alfa-Bank’s Alfa-Click, the e-banking service, gets occasional glitches, the bank’s customers complain to UrBC. In fact, the customers had been unable to perform any deposit transactions online for a few days in a row. For one, the online account management service was hardly available on November 27-30, 2009. Alfa-Bank’s press officer has already admitted the bank had a problem with its e-services at the end of November. However, the bank was unable to explain what had been the reason behind these problems. It could actually have been the imperfection of the bank’s technological system.

Belaya Bashnya Invest Investment Company placed its insolvency application with Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court. The date of the first hearing has not been set yet. The company’s license allowing it to perform brokerage and dealing operations and deal in securities management was annulled by the Federal Financial Market Service as early as September 2009. The decision was preceded by the company’s own application and the examination of some documents that proved Belaya Bashnya Invest had no failed liabilities. In fact, the company’s management declared a year ago that they were going to

Sverdlovsk Region Aviation Court is to look into the claim laid by Rosoboronexport Federal State Unitary Enterprise (the state defense agency) against Ural Civil Aviation Plant. The plaintiff insists on being paid 2.28 million RUR. According to the case materials, Rosoboronexport believes the plant should have paid the agency a 5% commission off all the contracts the defendant has signed regarding the repair and export of military air engines. During a preliminary court hearing, the plaintiff placed an application for raising its claims up to 2.51 million RUR. This request was sustained by

Yekaterinburg division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) carried out ten unscheduled inspections and administrative investigations and four scheduled inspections of nine travel agents in January-October 2009. The inspections were completed in cooperation with the public prosecution authorities for transportation after some complaints had been placed by the companies’ customers. Among the inspected companies were Kollektsiya Puteshestviy, Eldorado Tour Plus, Alfa-Travel, TBK Inturline, Severnaya Palmyra, TF Aeroluxe, Sezon Otpuskov, and Fond Mira Group. Rospotrebnadzor

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court will resume the hearing of the claim laid by Mikhail Maksimov against Leonid Itskov and Ural Innovational Commercial Bank (Uralincombank, UIC Bank) on December 2, 2009. The plaintiff insists on his right to a share in the bank’s authorized capital. Maksimov claims that this share should come to 12.5% of the bank’s shares, which amounts to about 5.3 million RUR. As it happens, the defendants did not provide any response to this claim in the course of the preliminary court hearing on November 19, 2009. The court also decided to get a number of strangers to

Bank24.ru (now the asset of Life Group’s Probusinessbank) is to reduce the interest rate on the customers’ account balance on December 6, 2009. The interest rate offered for the money the clients keep in the bank’s online and Visa accounts will come to 6% a year, which will be 2% lower than the previous figure of 8%. This is not the first time Bank24.ru has decreased the interest rates it offers for the account balance. The original offer came to as much as 11% a year.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin attended the opening ceremony of a new multi-level road junction on a loop road next to Chelyabinsk. The Governor thanked all the builders who took part in the project and spoke very approvingly of the quality of their work. ‘This is a hi-tech piece of work that is very important for the region. It looks grand, beautiful, and very modern,’ Petr Sumin said. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the junction was made available to the motorists as soon as the symbolic red ribbon had been cut. This junction belongs to Chelyabinsk orbital

Nissan Motor Rus warned the owners of Nissan X-Trail automobiles living in Sverdlovsk Region that some elements of the steering gear and the fuel system of the cars might not have been assembled properly. ‘Nissan experts said some of these vehicles had to be inspected. Since the steering gear and the fuel system are the vital parts of a car that impact the driver’s safety directly, it is essential to make sure as soon as possible that nothing prevents them from operating normally,’ the letter sent to some of Nissan X-Trail owners and signed by Nissan Motor Rus After-Sale Services Director

Following a series of hearings, the court fully sustained all the claims laid by consumers against Alfa-Travel, which helped prevent a total 832,600 RUR worth of damage to these consumers. What is more, Alfa-Travel will have to pay 10,000 RUR for moral damage done to the consumers and a 124,800 RUR penalty for refusing to meet the plaintiffs’ claims in an out-of-court settlement, the spokesperson for Yekaterinburg division of Rospotrebnadzor (the consumer rights watchdog) reports. A Rospotrebnadzor expert who was involved in the case came to the conclusion that Alfa-Travel had actually

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) launched its blast furnace 1 recently. According to the company’s PR Department, the furnace was first placed into the reserve category after a first-class overhaul but was later re-launched because of the need to give an overhaul to the second blast furnace. So blast furnace 1 is now gradually going back to its full production capacity, which means MMK is currently using seven out of eight blast furnaces altogether. In addition to re-launching blast furnace 1, the enterprise also started using its coke furnace battery 3. The battery had been

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) sheet-rolling shop recently manufactured a pilot batch of cold-rolled products made of rephosphorized steel; this batch has already been shipped to the customer, AvtoVAZ. MMK PR Department reports RS steel contains up to .12% of phosphorus, which, in combination with a number of other chemical compounds, helps get very durable, yielding, and stretchable kinds of steel that are corrosion-resistant and have outstanding welding properties. This is why RS steel is particularly popular with car manufactories. MMK’s sheet-rolling shop 5 is now making

‘The recent glitch in the Italian ATM network is something that can actually be repeated in Russia, but the likelihood of such an event is extremely low. In case of the Italian machines, the reason behind the trouble was some software malfunction,’ Bank Koltso Urala’s Card Management Department informed UrBC. Meanwhile, the dwellers of several Italian cities were shocked a few days ago when due to a computer glitch of some sort some Postamat ATMs started withdrawing much more money from their bank accounts than the customers were actually taking out. ‘As for Russia, an ATM can stop operating

The detention of Bank VEFK Ural’s former Chair Olga Chechushkova has been extended until February 28, 2010. The decision was taken by the court after the investigative authorities had placed an application to this extent. Olga Chechushkova was arrested and placed in a detention ward at the beginning of July 2009. She is suspected of abuse of power as stated in Article 201 (part 1) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code. The investigative authorities believe that in 2007-2008, Ms Chechushkova kept signing agreements which were disadvantageous for the bank but which resulted in getting private

‘The legal action against Severouralsk Bauxite Mine (SUBR) hasn’t been going very smoothly so far. I am not satisfied with the professionalism of our judge, which is why I decided not to come to the hearings so as to keep the application officially unconsidered. This means I will be able to place another application and have my case handled by a different judge,’ Chairman of UC RUSAL SUBR’s independent trade union of miners Valeriy Zolotarev said to UrBC reporters. Meanwhile, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Russia’s Independent Trade Union of Miners’

A solemn opening ceremony of SKB-Bank’s new office in Cherkessk took place on November 27, 2009. The ceremony was attended by President of Karachayevo-Cherkess Republic Boris Ebzeyev. As a matter of fact, SKB-Bank set up an outlet in Cherkessk as early as three years ago, but the office used to operate as a representation only and couldn’t serve anyone except for businesses. Now SKB-Bank’s office works as a universal bank offering a full range of banking services to both private individuals and legal entities. ‘The locals are quite familiar with our bank already. They will be happy to become

Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank (SGB) recently proved the Urals’ leading bank in terms of private individuals’ deposits growth. The bank actually topped the regional rating for Russian banks in January-September 2009 published by Bankir.ru The volume of private individuals’ deposits amounted to more than 9 billion RUR on October 1, 2009. This means the figure has gone up by 70% since the beginning of the year, thus making SGB Ural Region’s No.1 in this respect. This incredible increase in the private individuals’ deposit volume has secured the bank the 66th position in the country-wide rating as

Governor of Yaroslavl Region Sergey Vakhrukov and President of RENOVA-StroyGroup Veniamin Golubitskiy recently signed an agreement of intent regarding a multi-faceted area development project. The project is expected to speed up the construction of a new district in Yaroslavl called Yabloneviy Posad. The project provides for multi-faceted development of the city’s Dzerzhinskiy area, with putting up a number of apartment buildings, a set of town houses, and some buildings pertaining to the social infrastructure. The new district will meet all the standards of a modern, comfortable, and safe

‘The opening of Greenwich Shopping Center’s third extension will only take place on December 17, 2009. This is the final and unchangeable date. The earlier dates that we had set for November 2009 had to be positponed due to unfinished construction process,’ Director of Greenwich Shopping Center Dmitriy Sarapultsev said to UrBC. In fact, the opening date was first set for November 1, 2009 and then for November 26, 2009. The new extension’s area comes to 101,000 sq m; this, added to the existing 53,000 sq m of the older buildings, will give Greenwich Shopping Center a total area of 154,000 sq m.

RU-CENTER turned down the request of Talisman, the Urals-based language school chain, for a Russian language-based domain despite the fact that Talisman is a registered trademark belonging to the applicant. The domain center claims the language school’s application can’t be accepted because the registered domain name must reproduce the trademark in Cyrillic alphabet very precisely, symbol for symbol. ‘The fact that we haven’ been allowed to register a Cyrillic domain was not a real blow to the company’s management. We only wanted to use the domain талисман.рф as a second web address mirroring