Buy Russia When Oil is Cheap
If you wonder why I recommend a shower after investing in Russia, Bill Browder will give you the reasons at length on his YouTube video. Bill is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, one of the firms that pioneered equity investment in the former Soviet Union in the nineties.
After a decade of pursing a campaign of activist investing that brought major changes in corporate governance in big companies like Gazprom (OGZPF.PK) and Sberbank (SBRPF.PK), a mafia connected government struck back with a vengeance. It deported Browder in 2005, arrested his lawyer, and pressured him to provide false testimony against his boss, which he refused. A year later, the man died in prison from “natural causes.”
The Russian government then seized Browder’s operating companies, but fortunately for investors, not before he was able to sell off $4.5 billion in holdings and spirit the funds out of the country.
Browder, who is of Russian descent, and whose grandfather was chairman of the American Communist Party, says his case is but the tip of the iceberg. Major multinationals like Shell, BP, and Ikea have also been the victims of corruption and faced arbitrary seizure of assets by the well connected. This lawlessness is the reason why Russian companies perennially trade at single digit multiples. They are cheap on paper, but carry hidden, unquantifiable risks.
Despite all of the above, mega hedge fund Traxis Partners founder, Barton Biggs, says there is still a case to make for investment in Russia. It is the classic emerging middle class story. Russians have no credit card debt, no home mortgages, and terrible housing, but the resource wealth to buy what they need. Barton sees Russia eventually becoming a basic, functioning European country, but will first have to engineer a growth spurt to get there. That is the play. The principal vehicle for most foreigners to get into the land of Lenin and Red Square is to buy the ETF, (RSX), which was up 300% in 2009.
No doubt that investing in Russia is a double edged sword. It offers enormous oil reserves and natural resources, with GDP flipping from a -7.9% rate in 2009 to an expected 3.2% this year. But you run the risk of a knock on the door in the middle of the night. займы на карту срочно онлайн займы www.zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/online-payday-loans-cash-advances.php срочный займ на карту онлайн
Magnitsky family to ask human rights council for protection from police
Family and relatives of Sergey Magnitsky, the lawyer of the London-based investment fund Hermitage Capital who died in custody two years ago, are addressing the presidential human rights council after being pressured by the Interior Ministry, the fund’s press-release obtained by Gazeta.ru said.
“The Interior Ministry has for the fifth time sent a summons to Magnitsky’s relatives to participate in the investigation, refusing all their complaints about illegitimacy of the posthumous prosecution of Magnitsky,” the press-release said.
“I do not find it possible to take part in investigation procedures in the status which is not prescribed by the law and was given to me without my approval. I refuse to take part in the patently unlawful actions of this case, in the framework of which and on the basis of fabricated proof, my son was repressed,” Magnitsky’s mother, Natalya Magnitsky, said in a statement to the prosecutor general, Viktor Tchaika.
Read More →
Presidential council to discuss complaint about pressure on Magnitsky’s relatives
Presidential human rights council will discuss a complaint from Sergei Magnitsky’s relatives about the Interior Ministry’s pressure and will try to help them, council member Kirill Kabanov told RIA Novosti.
“We will hold the council’s working group meeting soon,” said Kabanov emphasizing that the human activists will try to influence the situation and help the relatives.
Magnitsky, who was accused of corporate tax evasion in relation to his work for the investment fund, died in an investigative isolation ward in November 2009. According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, his death was caused by cardiovascular insufficiency.
The criminal case against Magnitsky was terminated by the Investigative Committee due to his death, but the Prosecutor General’s Office decided to resume the investigation. Magnitsky’s relatives have demanded that the case against him be dropped.
Read More →
Magnitsky Relatives Complain of Harassment
Relatives of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky have appealed to the Kremlin human rights council to stop “harassment” by Interior Ministry officials pursuing a posthumous criminal case against Magnitsky, Hermitage Capital said Tuesday.
The request came after Magnitsky’s relatives were summoned for the fifth time to aid the investigation against the anti-corruption whistleblower, who was arrested on tax evasion charges in 2008 after he accused officials of stealing $230 million from the state budget. He died in pretrial detention a year later.
Magnitsky’s relatives, who have called for the investigation to be closed, will not cooperate with investigators and resist their threats to “illegally” appoint a lawyer to represent them, Hermitage Capital said in a statement.
Read More →
Russia launches attack on Labour MP Denis MacShane
Russia has launched a highly unusual personal attack on Labour MP Denis MacShane, accusing him of deliberately trying to sabotage UK-Russia relations.
The Kremlin lashed out after the former Foreign Office minister organised a debate in the House of Commons on human rights in Russia during which he suggested that Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, should not be made welcome at the London Olympics this summer.
His stance angered the Russian embassy which issued a furious statement.
“The irresponsible attempts of certain parliamentarians to damage our bilateral relationship by taking advantage of real problems cannot but give grounds for serious concern,” the embassy said.
Read More →
What the Market Will Bear
A new survey by a Russian small and midsized business interest group claims that pressure from government officials seeking bribes has risen dramatically in the last several years. While corruption in Russian businesses gained the spotlight in recent years after the Hermitage affair and the death of Firestone Duncan lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in police custody, business owners claimed that corruption is a systemic problem that is particularly targeting small business in Russia today. In the past half-decade, the number of those who say that they regularly face extralegal government pressure has nearly quadrupled.
According to the research, which is conducted yearly by the Russian Union of Manufacturers and Entrepreneurs, the number of business owners who “regularly experience pressure from state establishments” has climbed to 36 percent of all the business owners polled in the anonymous survey. Those who have faced “at least one case” of pressure for bribes from the government stood at 36 percent, while those who responded that they had never encountered government interference dropped just below 50 percent. Those numbers show a significant jump from the first survey put out by the organization in 2006, with just 19 percent saying they faced regular pressure from government and 61 percent responding that they had never been targeted by corrupt officials.
Read More →
UK MP wants to bar Russian officials from London Olympics
UK Member of Parliament Denis MacShane called for barring a number of Russian officials from attending the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
MacShane addressed parliament on Wednesday with a report on human rights in Russia, including the case of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in pre-trial detention two years ago.
MacShane challenged Prime Minister David Cameron to follow the example of Margaret Thatcher, who in 1980 headed the campaign to boycott the Moscow Olympics in protest over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
“In 1980, Mrs. Thatcher had the guts to say no to a formal British endorsement of the Moscow Olympics,” MacShane said.
Read More →
Exposed: the ugly face of Putin’s Russia
In a powerful documentary on Putin’s Russia made by Norma Percy to be shown on BBC2 on 19 January there is an extraordinary moment when the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky confronts the recently elected President Putin. On film he tells him that Russia is so corrupt up that to 10 per cent of national wealth is disappearing into the hands of the post-Soviet bureaucracy. So much so that all the best and brightest graduates leaving college want to be tax police. That’s where the money is to be made, complains the owner of Yukos, as tax shakedowns were the most common form of getting rich quick.
At the time, in 2002, the sleek, jowly Khodorkovsky was still Russia’s top oligarch. As he confronts Putin the Russian leader’s eyes narrow and he taps his pencil with irritation on the table as he rebukes the oligarch at a business leaders’ council held in the Kremlin which was filmed and remains an electrifying moment in the documentary. Stalin also used a pencil rather than a pen to initial or tick lists to be sent to the Gulag. Khodorkovsky today finds himself in prison where those business leaders who did not pay their dues to the Putinocracy have found themselves if they did not flee to exile in time.
Read More →
UK ‘should tell Vladimir Putin he is not welcome at Olympics’
MPs call for Russian prime minister to be told he is not wanted at London games unless Russia improves human rights record.
Britain should tell Vladimir Putin that he is not welcome at the London Olympics unless Russia makes meaningful efforts to improve its human rights record, MPs will say.
In a move likely to infuriate the Kremlin, Labour’s former Europe minister Denis MacShane will make a parliamentary call for the government to make it clear that Putin is not wanted at the games.
Dozens of heads of state are expected to attend the opening ceremony on 27 July. The Queen will preside over the ceremony, with each national team – including Russia – taking part in a parade.
Putin, currently the prime minister, is certain to win Russia’s presidential election in March despite public discontent and huge protests against election fraud last month. He will be back in the Kremlin and on the international stage from May.
Read More →
-
To learn more about what happened to Sergei Magnitsky please read below
- Sergei Magnitsky
- Why was Sergei Magnitsky arrested?
- Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and death in prison
- President’s investigation sabotaged and going nowhere
- The corrupt officers attempt to arrest 8 lawyers
- Past crimes committed by the same corrupt officers
- Petitions requesting a real investigation into Magnitsky's death
- Worldwide reaction, calls to punish those responsible for corruption and murder
- Complaints against Lt.Col. Kuznetsov
- Complaints against Major Karpov
- Cover up
- Press about Magnitsky
- Bloggers about Magnitsky
- Corrupt officers:
- Sign petition
- Citizen investigator
- Join Justice for Magnitsky group on Facebook
- Contact us
- Sergei Magnitsky
