Over 230 crimes related to production, storage, transportation, or sales of unsafe goods and services (Article 238 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code) were detected in Sverdlovsk Region in January-May 2009, Ural Federal District’s division of the General Prosecutor’s Office reports. For one, Yekaterinburg’s Verkh-Isetskiy district’s investigative authorities instituted a criminal lawsuit related to sales of overdue and therefore unsafe Heinz baby food. The respective documents have been placed with the court. It was revealed in the course of the inquiry that the manager of the baby food

Ural Airlines is to start operating a new Yekaterinburg-Moscow flight on June 26, 2009. The plane lands in Sheremetyevo International Airport. The flights will be operated on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. The departure and arrival time for U6-466 (Yekaterinburg-Moscow/Sheremetyevo) flight is 9:30 PM and 10:10 PM, respectively. The departure and arrival time for U6-465 (Moscow/Sheremetyevo-Yekaterinburg) flight is 11:30 PM and 3:40 AM, respectively. The new flight is expected to make the transit passenger’s connections in Moscow more convenient, the airline reports. ‘Ural

One of the Urals’ oldest consumer electronics chain stores might close down before the end of 2009. UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics found out that Uralskiy Val chain store might soon go out of business in accordance with the owners’ decisions. The possible liquidation could be caused by a dramatic drop in consumer electronics and home appliances sales, which, in its turn, was brought about by the global financial crisis. With the competition going up and the solvent demand going down, the Ural company finds itself unable to compete with the federal chains. The

‘If we do decide to set up a basket of currencies or a supranational currency at some point, I don’t think it would be a bad idea. However, it’s too early to speak of such projects yet. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states’ economies are very different just now; besides, a supranational currency is only useful when the countries are intensely involved in mutual investment and trade. We haven’t reached this cooperation level with all of the member states yet,’ Assistant to the Russian Federation President Arkadiy Dvorkovitch said at a briefing during the Shanghai Cooperation

‘SUAL Kremniy Ural has had a production stoppage because of the plummeting demand for its produce. This has to do with the general economic downfall that hit the silica-consuming steel-smelting and cast iron industries worst. Selling our goods is therefore virtually impossible at the moment. The company currently employs 122 people, but we are forced to make 85 people redundant soon. The remaining 37 employees will be enough to handle the current shipment volumes,’ UC RUSAL’s press officer for Ural Federal District Roman Lukichev said to UrBC. ‘The enterprise produced about 24,000 tons of

President of the Russian Federation Dmitriy Medvedev arrived in Yekaterinburg to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRIC summits on June 15-16, 2009. The presidential plane was greeted by Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Nikolai Vinnichenko and Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel. The leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states (Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) and observing states (India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan) are planning to discuss the

The shareholders of Uralsvyazinform (the Urals’ major telecommunications provider) elected their new Board of Directors in the course of the annual general meeting in Perm. According to Uralsvyazinform’s report, only eleven out of twenty-four proposed BOD members were actually voted for. These were: Evgeniy Yurchenko, Alla Grigorieva, Eduard Lebedev, Mikhail Batmanov, Olga Koroleva, Elena Umnova, Mikhail Leschenko, Alexander Provorotov, Sergey Kerber, Dmitriy Tushnov, and Anatoly Ufimkin.

Nizhneserginskiy metal goods plant’s shareholders decided at their annual general meeting to pass the dividend for 2008 and to leave the undistributed profit within the company, the enterprise’s press officer reports. In the course of the meeting, the shareholders also approved of the plant’s annual report for 2008, of the annual accounting report, and of their profit and loss statement for last financial year. What is more, the new BOD was elected, consisting of V. Vorotnikov, E. Ovcharov, O. Shargunova, V. Shevelev, and S. Chebotarev.

Most of Evraz Group’s members went through their greatest output downfalls (down to 50% in some cases) in the last quarter of 2008, with figures gradually rising in the first quarter of 2009, the holding’s Vice President Dmitriy Sotnikov said at a meeting with Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel. The holding now employs 2,000 fewer people compared with last fall, with 500 more employees soon to be made redundant at Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise (VGOK). The Governor said, however, that such redundancies were unacceptable. VGOK is just breaking even at the moment,

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel met up with the General Director of Uralvagonzavod Oleg Sienko, head of the Governor’s Administration Alexander Levin, and Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Viktor Koksharov. The Governor criticized bitterly the industrial giant’s new management team’s policies in the course of his last press conference. Rossel said Oleg Sienko’s mode of administrative behavior was very similar to that of Uralmashzavod’s former owner Kakha Bendukidze (who had nearly brought the enterprise to its knees). During the meeting, Oleg Sienko explained they’d only

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court started looking into one of the many claims laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna against Mayak Corporation and Uralinvesttsentr Ltd regarding the 71,221,989.04-ruble debt. The plaintiff also insists on having the defendant’s mortgaged property arrested. The preliminary hearing of the case was scheduled for June 11, 2009. As a matter of fact, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is to handle several lawsuits instituted by the bank against Mayak Corporation, with claims totaling to about 1 billion RUR.

A.K. Serov Metallurgical Plant (member of UMMC Holding) was able to prove the compliance of its environmental management system with the ISO 14001:2004 requirements to the auditors, UMMC press service reports. The audit procedure was carried out by TUV Rheinland, the global leader on the independent examination and evaluation services market. Over the four days of the audit, the company’s experts inspected about twenty of the plant’s shops and departments. According to TUV Rheinland’s leading auditor Irina Gabova, the plant’s management system is being perfectly maintained and continually

Alfa-Bank’s Yekaterinburg offices introduced an obligatory service for customers using their individual safety vaults; the commission charged for the service comes to 6,000 RUR a year for vaults with dimensions of 300mm x 550mm x 450 mm (height, length, and width, respectively), the bank’s Customer Support Center informed an UrBC reporter. This means Alfa-Bank actually makes any customer willing to rent a safety vault for any period of time open a bank account with them. The bank representatives have so far been unable to explain why this account is being required. According to the Customer

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin held a meeting on Zlatoust Metallurgical Plant’s (ZMZ) problems. The meeting was attended by Chairman of the regional Legislative Assembly Vladimir Myakush, Deputy Governor Yuri Klepov, Minister for Industry Evgeniy Teftelev, and Mayor of Zlatoust Dmitriy Migashkin. As for the plant, the General Director of Estar Group Mikhail Rakov, his first Deputy Nikolai Kamyshev, CEO ZMZ Sergey Khomyanin and ZMZ’s Chairman of Trade Union Marat Safiev were present. Sumin declared the current situation was unacceptable. ‘The crisis has affected the region’s entire

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin demanded in the course of the recent meeting with heads of the region’s municipalities that all the wage arrears should be eliminated within a week. All in all, the regional enterprises’ debt to their own workers had reached 102.8 million RUR by June 1, 2009, with thirty-four companies owing money to 7,800 employees. The Governor feels this isn’t an overwhelming sum on the regional level, so each and every of the debtor enterprises must be handled individually. ‘You’re actually protecting your pockets and not the people. If we don’t protect them, no

‘Our tenth Airbus 320 airplane (acquired from a British company) has recently arrived in Yekaterinburg, with another one on the way and two more expected at the end of June. In fact, we’ll be running twelve Airbus aircraft in mid-June, two of which are going to be Airbus 321 ones and ten will belong to the A 320 family. These are the planes we are planning to hit the winter season with,’ Ural Airlines Commercial Director Kirill Skuratov announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘We are launching the new non-stop Yekaterinburg-Beijing flight on July 1, 2009, since the airplanes with

Ural Federal District’s division of Rostechnadzor (the industrial safety watchdog) and the regional labor inspection completed the investigation of an accident that took place at Uralkhimplast on April 15, 2009. It was detected that an explosion occurred at the ion exchanger unit because of neglected technological regulation. As a result, the reactor was over-filled with excess amount of ammonia solution over a very short period of time, causing an uncontrollable exothermal reaction. The lack of accident-preventing automatic protection and violation of the industrial safety rules at the

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Microsoft Corporation against Gorizont Ltd regarding the 384,188-ruble compensation. The case has been united with the claim laid by Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corp. against Gorizont regarding the 1,222,817.96 –ruble compensation for copyright abuse. The defendant has recently provided some documents indicating that the computers related to the alleged offense belong to N.A. Semikhatov Scientific Production Association (NPO Avtomatika), which is why the plaintiff asked for making the enterprise an intervener with one

URSA Bank and MDM-Bank’s ATM networks are now operating under the same range of tariff schemes and offers. The holders of Visas and MasterCards issued by either of the banks can now get some cash in all of their ATMs without any commission. The new offer was launched in June, with both banks’ processing centers united into a single technological system, URSA Bank’s press officer reports. URSA Bank’s ATM network comes to 785 machines in the Urals and Siberia. The addition of MDM-Bank’s machines will expand the network to 2,000 units throughout the country, thus making the united network

Serov investigative authorities (operating within the local division of the Russian Federation public prosecution authorities) have recently completed their inquiry into the accident that led to contamination of the River Turya, the spokesperson for the authorities reports. The authorities carried out a detailed investigation of why the River Turiya, Sverdlovsk Region, had turned red. It was detected that the area around UC RUSAL Bogoslovskiy smelter’s slurry pipeline got contaminated because the pipeline had leaked. So, some of the slurry was washed down into the river with melt-water,