Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin directed 40 million RUR to buy school textbooks this year. The regional Education and Science Ministry is already collecting applications from the local schools to find out what program each of the schools employs and where the book shortage is the greatest. Elementary school books are given a natural priority; so are the textbooks needed for the children from lower-income families or families with many children. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the books will be bought immediately from the publishers with a 20% discount, which means

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is now considering the claim laid by Global Gaming Expo (GGE) against Bank24.ru, Kommersant reports. GGE insists on being paid 186 million RUR that the bank allegedly obtained through unjust enrichment. The plaintiff claims the defendant wrote off the sum off GGE’s accounts illegally, which made it impossible for the plaintiff to pay its customers (who gave their savings into GGE’s trust management). Meanwhile, Bank24.ru insists that the sum was written off upon GGE’s request. According to Kommersant, GGE, founded by a Yekaterinburg businessman Alexei

Egorshinskiy radio plant is to undergo bankruptcy proceedings, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court ruled on August 17, 2009. This was the court’s verdict on the claim laid by Vodokanal against the plant regarding the defendant’s 2.74-million-ruble debt. The claim was placed with the court on June 17, 2009. In July, Arbitration Court received a petition from Uralkabel; the company insisted on declaring the radio plant insolvent. According to the official data available, the plant then owed over 1.5 billion RUR to its creditors and partners, with about 61 million RUR worth of wage arrears.

Having considered case А60–24483/09-С11 initiated on July 30, 2009, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court ruled that Kamensk-Uralskiy non ferrous metals manufacturer should undergo bankruptcy proceedings for seven months. A member of Yuzhniy Ural S. Semenov was appointed the enterprise’s trustee in bankruptcy.

The revenues of Russian Railways Public Company (calculated in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) came to 483.13 billion RUR in the first half of 2009, which was 8.8% less than a year earlier. At the same time, the company’s losses amounted to 13,745,455,000 RUR. Russian Railways report the losses were caused by the general economic meltdown that led to decreased solvent demand and people traveling less. As a result, the railway company’s passenger turnover plummeted, while the Ministry for Economic Development’s inflation forecasts came to look even gloomier than before.

In July 2009, Sverdlovsk Region’s industrial production index only reached 77.2% of the figures recorded in July 2008 and only 88.9% of the figures for June 2009, the region’s Ministry for Economy and Labor reports, referring to the data provided by the local division of the Federal State Statistics Service. As for the period of January to July 2009, the IPI amounted to 74.8% of the figures recorded a year earlier; these figures include a 16.5% drop in the mineral resources output, a 27.8% drop in the manufacturing enterprises’ output, and a 13.4% decrease in the production and distribution

The value of assets owned by a Pervouralsk-based manufacturer of tubular engineering structures plunged by 12.411 million RUR, or 97.8% (from 12.684 million RUR in the first quarter of the year to 273,000 RUR in the second quarter). The enterprise reports the assets devaluated due to divestiture.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Nova-Group Development against Luxury Life regarding the $83,780 payment. The main court hearing was scheduled for August 14, 2009. Luxury Life owns FENDI CASA, a fashionable furniture and home accessories boutique that used to be operating in Yekaterinburg’s Tikhvin Gallery at 48 Khokhryakov St. Like Alex Zander, FENDI CASA is a member of AZ-Group Holding that specializes in interior design. According to the files involved in the case, the plaintiff took legal action because of the money the defendant owns them under

The district division of the Russian Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs keeps handling the criminal proceedings related to accusations of embezzling the Russian Federation Pension Fund’s money. The sum in question, namely, 955.8 million RUR, was deposited with Bank VEFK-Ural that has recently gone bust. The main suspect is the bank’s Chair of the Supervisory Board Olga Chechushkova, who is now kept in detention. The damage done to the bank by her alleged self-interested offenses and financial frauds was estimated at 127 million RUR. ‘Our investigative efforts enabled us to detect that

The profits of Raiffeisen International Bank Holding AG (Raiffeisen Zentralbank Austria AG’s daughter enterprise and RZB Group’s member) reached ?78m in the first half of 2009, which was 86.2% less than a year earlier. The company reports its consolidated profits dropped due to the need to build up on the devaluation reserves. The bank’s pre-tax profits went down by 81.7% and came to ?154m, while the after-tax returns decreased by 81.6% and amounted to ?119m. All of these data have been presented in accordance with the IAS.

The net loss of Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise (VGOK) amounted to 76.41 million RUR in the first half of 2009, whereas a year earlier, the enterprise had 1.19 billion RUR worth of net profits.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin directed 22 million RUR to complete the heating supply network’s upgrade in the village of Bairamgulovo, Argayashskiy district. The spokesperson for the Governor reports this aid from the region’s budget will help the village finish up all the jobs. Two new gas boilers will replace the thirty-seven-year-old coal boiler (responsible for discharging fifty tons of dust and soot a season), while the other bits of obsolete machinery will give way to some new Italian equipment that is both noiseless and environmentally friendly as well as almost fully

Uralkaliy’s Board of Directors decided to nearly halve the number of the new Supervisory Board’s members. Under the new regulations, the Board comprises Vice President for Strategic Development Mikhail Antonov, General Director and Chairman of the Supervisory Board Vladislav Baumgertner, Deputy GD and Economics and Finance Director Viktor Belyakov, Deputy GD Sergey Dyakov, HR Director Elena Samsonova, and Director for Legal and Corporate Issues Marina Shvetsova. The old Board used to have thirteen members, including the company’s PR Director Eduard Koridorov.

SKB-Bank’s top managers recently met Visa’s General Director for Russia Maarten van den Belt, who visited the bank’s premises with Visa CEMEA Manager, SKB-Bank’s curator Elizaveta Voinskaya, the bank’s press officer reports. The meeting was devoted to a number of issues ranging from the cards’ design to the ways of promoting a cashless culture.

‘In the first half of 2009, MRSK Urala’s electricity supply output reached 37,199.7 million kilowatt-hours, which was 17% less than in the first half of 2008. Only about 33,861.7 million kilowatt-hours supplied were actually used productively. This, again, was 18.2% less than in the first half of 2008,’ MRSK Urala’s Deputy GD for Development and Sales Sergey Zolotarev announced at an online conference coordinated by FINAM Investment Company. ‘The recession keeps affecting the Russian economy rather badly and thus spurs on the industrial production decline. According to the data we have

‘Sverdlovsk Region owes us about 2 billion RUR for the previous heating season services; this is an unprecedented amount of money, in fact,’ the spokesperson for Uralsevergaz Oleg Vlasov said to an UrBC reporter. ‘This year’s heating season is to start on September 15, 2009. Prior to this, we must get all the money from our debtors; otherwise we simply won’t be able to purchase the natural gas to launch the seasonal services. This is exactly why we had to employ some thoroughgoing measures: if the debt happens to be pending for over two months, we’ll have to stop supplying the gas to the

Bank VTB 24 press service claims 3.8 million RUR was illegally transferred into Uralprivatbank’s client accounts after this money had been stolen from Gelix Center for Democracy and Human Rights Promotion’s account in Bank VTB 24. ‘Bank VTB 24 Saint Petersburg branch’s security service detected a suspicious transaction within the Bank-Client Online system on August 7, 2009. 3.8 million RUR was taken out of Gelix Center’s account and was first transferred into another Bank VTB 24 customer’s account and then into client accounts at Uralprivatbank. Gelix Center was informed of this doubtful

The network provider’s management looked into the results of MRSK Urala’s performance in the first half of 2009 during an ad hoc conference coordinated by FINAM Investment Company. According to MRSK Urala’s Deputy GD for Capital Construction Sergey Semerikov, their investment program for 2009 had to be halved against the figures they had initially set out for. ‘At the end of 2008, we expected to have invested about 7.7 billion RUR in various projects, but now we find we are forced to stick with the modest 2.9 billion RUR. The spending cuts mostly affected the buildings whose commercial

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to look into the claim laid by Global Gaming Expo (GGE) against Bank24.ru. The plaintiff insists on the defendant paying them 186,649,428.64 RUR. The court hearing was scheduled for September 9, 2009. Now GGE was actually founded by Bank24.ru’s former BOD member Alexei Kalinichenko. During the preliminary hearing on August 12, 2009, the bank’s representative declared the company did not accept GGE’s claims. The executive explained the bank had never written off any sums mentioned in the plaintiff’s application. All the transactions were carried out

‘The company’s profits were actually lower in the first half of 2009 than had been expected. This largely has to do with the customers’ decreased purchasing power. Besides, there are plenty of legal entities trying to reduce their outgoings, including telecommunications spending. At the same time, our revenues have been on the increase lately,’ Uralsvyazinform’s Deputy GD and Commercial Director Pavel Zaitsev announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. In fact, the average number of workers employed by the telecommunications provider came to 22,050 people in June 2009, which was 8.4%