11
February 2011

A triple test for investing in emerging markets

The Globe and Mail

Emerging markets are popular these days, but how safe are these far-flung investments?

The Egyptian and Tunisian revolts prove that you can’t assess the risk of emerging markets simply by looking at economic data. Even Israel’s famed intelligence service failed to predict the recent uprisings in its own backyard, just as the CIA did not foresee the collapse of East Germany in 1989.

Or rather, one person did foresee the latter. Vernon Walters, then-U.S. ambassador to West Germany, had just returned from East Germany where he talked to people on the street, and quickly cabled James Baker, then Secretary of State, to report that the communist state would erupt. Mr. Walters was scorned, but he was right – the Berlin Wall fell in a week.

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10
February 2011

Crab Mogul Fears Magnitsky’s Fate

The Moscow Times

Arkady Gontmakher, a U.S. seafood mogul under investigation in Russia for money laundering, doubts he will last long enough to see the end of his case.

“I have suffered repeated heart attacks, and I don’t know for how long my heart will last,” he told The Moscow Times on Tuesday.

Gontmakher, 53, looked tired and tense during the interview in a hotel in Moscow. The businessman, who is forbidden to leave Russia, came to the capital for a medical checkup to decide whether he needs heart surgery.

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08
February 2011

Russia: who’s next to be expelled?

Financial Times

Throwing out Guardian newspaper journalist Luke Harding seems to have backfired as an attempt by the Kremlin to improve Russia’s image. Harding tried to fly back to Russia on Saturday from a trip abroad but had his visa cancelled at the airport.

He is not the first westerner to be expelled from Russia, and may not be the last – business people included.

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08
February 2011

Russia puts British reporter on banned list

Reuters

Russia has put a British reporter for the Guardian newspaper on a list of people banned from entering the country because he entered a closed security zone without permission, a law enforcement source said on Tuesday.

Guardian correspondent Luke Harding was refused entry at passport control in Moscow this weekend, had his visa annulled and was put on a plane back to Britain, his newspaper said.

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04
February 2011

Doing business in Russia is like playing roulette

Russia-IC

Russia looks attractive for investment and business development, but the problem of possible risks still remains.

As says CBS Interactive Business Network, due to poor law enforcement, the proliferation of weapons and corruption, Russia suffers from a wide variety of crime. According to the Time, in country exists a thing, “known as reiderstvo, or “raiding,” a term that describes an array of illegal tactics — including identity theft, forgery, bribery and physical intimidation — used by corrupt policemen, tax officials, lawyers and financiers to seize a person’s business or property”. According to the Time, businessmen not only risk losing their assets, but they can also end up in jail on trumped-up charges brought by corrupt law enforcement officials and prosecutors.

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04
February 2011

Official Not Worried About EU Visa Ban

The Moscow Times

A senior Russian investigative official said he would not care if the European Union banned him from entry over the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

“I don’t have any immediate plans to go abroad,” Alexei Anichin, head of the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Committee, told reporters in Moscow on Thursday. “But if I do go and they don’t let me in, it won’t be a big tragedy for me.”

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03
February 2011

Russian police general dismissive of EU, US sanctions over lawyer’s death

REN TV

Text of report by privately owned Russian television channel REN TV on 3 February

[Presenter] Yelena Baturina, the wife of the former Moscow mayor [Yuriy Luzhkov], may be invited for questioning in connection with the theft of R13bn [over 430m dollars at the current exchange rate] from the Moscow city budget, the head of the Interior Ministry’s investigations committee, Aleksey Anichin, has said at a news conference today. He said that the investigation was in full swing, however the journalists were interested not so much in Baturina’s problems as in the problems of Anichin himself and, specifically, if he will be missing Europe since Anichin’s name is on the so-called black list of 60 officials connected with the Magnitskiy case who have been banned from entering European countries and the USA.

[Anichin] To take a decision like that, not only as regards me but as regards 60 people, without any court or other ruling is strange, to say the least. In recent years I have not travelled anywhere apart from former Soviet republics and have no plans to, so even if they do issue the ban, I won’t be suffering much.

[Presenter] Gen Anichin added that he had not received an official notification of a ban to enter the USA and EU countries.

An employee of the investment fund Hermitage Capital, Sergey Magnitskiy, while under investigation, died in custody in November 2009. The circumstances of his death have not been established still. займы онлайн на карту срочно займы на карту без отказа https://zp-pdl.com/how-to-get-fast-payday-loan-online.php https://zp-pdl.com/get-a-next-business-day-payday-loan.php срочный займ на карту онлайн

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03
February 2011

If human rights is to be fundamental to foreign policy, the Government must seek justice over the death of Sergei Magnitsky

Conservative Home

Two years after the false arrest, torture while in police custody and death of tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, the United Nations is launching a formal investigation after a 100 page report was submitted by Redress, a leading UK NGO on torture. UN Special Rapporteurs on Torture, Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions and the Independence of Judges and Lawyers will be carrying out formal investigations on the case.

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02
February 2011

For Yeltsin, Kremlin Seeks Yukos Review

The Moscow Times

President Dmitry Medvedev paid tribute to late President Boris Yeltsin on what would have been his 80th birthday Tuesday by enlarging the Kremlin’s human rights council and ordering it to examine the cases of Sergei Magnitsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

It was unclear whether the changes, announced at the unveiling of a Yeltsin monument in Yekaterinburg, capital of Yeltsin’s native Sverdlovsk region, would add clout to the previously largely toothless council.

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