Posts Tagged ‘the observer’
Russia reaches for the stars with its own Silicon Valley
Skolkovo’s facilities are designed to attract the best minds in science to Moscow, but investors are still warned to be wary.
Russia is planning another revolution. Moscow has pinned its future on transforming 400 hectares (1.5 sq miles) of nondescript farmland 20 miles west of the Kremlin into a base camp for the next generation of Mark Zuckerbergs.
By 2015 these desolate fields will be transformed into a city of 35,000 boasting some of the most advanced research centres in the world, if you believe the Kremlin’s plans. This is Silikonnovaya Dolina: Russia’s Silicon Valley.
It’s no pipe dream, according to promotional material handed out to British scientists, entrepreneurs and investors last week as part of a global mission to drum up interest in the Skolkovo Innovation Centre, President Dmitry Medvedev’s pet project.
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Secret visa bans over death of Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky
Up to 60 Russian officials implicated in the controversial death of a whistleblower have been secretly banned from entering the UK by the British government.
Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was working for Hermitage Capital Management, a British-based investment fund, when he exposed a tax fraud worth pounds 144m, the biggest in Russian history.
After making accusations against Interior Ministry officials, he was arrested and then died in police custody after being denied medical care. Human rights activists say that the father-of-two was tortured and badly beaten in the hours before his death in November 2009. John McCain, the former US presidential candidate, and others have called for sanctions against Russian officials implicated in Magnitsky’s death.
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