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Wednesday, March 26, 2008 Volume 12 Number 57
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Russia
BP EMPLOYEES WORKING FOR TNK-BP RECALLED...TNK-BP confirmed on March 25 that 148 of its BP employees have been withdrawn from Russia because of visa issues. "The Moscow Times" on March 26 quoted TNK-BP spokeswoman Marina Dracheva as saying that the 148 BP employees "have been temporarily withdrawn from TNK-BP" due to "lack of clarity over their current visa status." The Oil Information Agency on March 24 quoted an "informed source" as saying that the 148 BP employees assigned to TNK-BP were having problems extending their visas but that it was a "temporary technical problem" that TNK-BP expected to resolve soon. Interfax quoted a source in "Russian power structures" as confirming that around 150 foreign TNK-BP employees were having problems extending their work visas because, among other things, some of them entered the country on business visas rather than work visas. The Interfax source said the employees' problems are strictly connected to Russian migration law and have nothing to do with politics or any "spy story" -- an apparent reference to Ilya Zaslavsky, a TNK-BP employee who, along with his brother Alexander, who heads the British Council's Alumni Club, has been charged by the Federal Security Service (FSB) with industrial espionage. Both have Russian and U.S. citizenship. The Moscow offices of TNK-BP and BP were searched on March 19 (see "RFE/RL Newsline," March 20, 2008). On March 21, the State Duma approved in a second of three required readings a measure restricting foreign investment in key sectors such as oil and gas, aerospace and mass media, AP reported. The legislation requires any private foreign company wanting to buy more than 50 percent of a company in any of 42 "strategic" sectors to obtain permission from a commission made up of Russian and security officials. JB ...AS INTERIOR MINISTRY ANNOUNCES TAX-EVASION PROBE Russia's Interior Ministry said on March 25 that it is investigating "large-scale tax evasion" to the tune of $40 million involving Sidanco, an oil unit that TNK-BP liquidated in 2005 after merging it with other assets during a consolidation, Reuters reported. Following last week's raid on TNK-BP's offices in Moscow, a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry's Investigative Committee, said the raid was carried out by Interior Ministry investigators on the basis of a criminal case brought related to Sidanco. Newsru.com reported that the case involving Sidanco was brought in April 1999 and involved charges of "premeditated bankruptcy." However, several media outlets reported that the raid on TNK-BP and a subsequent raid on BP's offices in the Russian capital were conducted by FSB personnel (see "RFE/RL Newsline," March 20, 2008). Following the raids, the FSB announced it has charged a TNK-BP employee and his brother with industrial espionage. According to Reuters, the Interior Ministry said the tax-evasion case involving Sidanco was opened in mid-2007. The news agency noted that TNK-BP's other unit, Slavneft, which is co-owned by state gas firm Gazprom, is facing a separate tax-evasion probe. JB ANOTHER REGIONAL YABLOKO LEADER ARRESTED Oleg Kochkin, the chairman of the Penza Oblast branch of Yabloko who is also chief editor of the opposition newspaper "Lyubimaya gazeta," has been arrested on suspicion of extortion for allegedly threatening to publish compromising material about a Penza resident and his relatives if the resident refused to pay Kochkin several million rubles, newsru.com reported on March 25. According to the website, Kochkin could face seven to 15 years in prison if convicted of extortion. Yabloko denounced the case against Kochkin as politically motivated, comparing it to the case against St. Petersburg Yabloko leader Maksim Reznik, who was arrested on March 2 for allegedly insulting and assaulting police officers. A St. Petersburg court ordered Reznik's release on March 21, throwing out an earlier district court ruling ordering that he remain in jail for two months pending trial, "The Moscow Times" reported on March 24. Meanwhile, kasparov.ru reported that nearly all of the copies of Kochkin's newspaper "Lyubimaya gazeta" published on March 19 were withdrawn from sale because they included a supplement that contained negative assessments of Penza Oblast Governor Vasily Bochkarev's record over the past decade. On March 24, the offices of "Lyubimaya gazeta" in Penza and the city of Kuznetsk were searched, with a computer server seized from the latter, kasparov.ru reported. JB BASTRYKIN REJECTS IDEA OF SINGLE INVESTIGATIVE COMMITTEE Investigative Committee Chairman Aleksandr Bastrykin has come out against the idea of creating a single investigative committee analogous to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, newsru.com reported on March 25. On March 18, "RBK Daily" reported that the idea of creating a Federal Investigation Service, an FBI-like body that would unite all of Russia's investigative bodies under one roof, had been agreed to in principle "at the highest level" and that the new body could come into being as early as this autumn. "RBK Daily" reported that either Bastrykin or another former classmate of President Vladimir Putin, Aleksei Anichin, head of the Interior Ministry's Investigative Committee, would be put in charge of the new body. According to the paper, either candidate would guarantee that the Kremlin would maintain maximal influence over the country's investigative organs. However, Bastrykin said during a March 25 press conference that he did not find the idea of a unified investigative committee "constructive," adding, "Bigger is not always more effective or better." Such a body would complicate the work of investigators and be difficult to manage, he said. "It's one thing to head a department in which there are 16,500 investigators, and another thing -- [one with] 120,000 people," newsru.com quoted him as saying. In addition, Bastrykin said creating a "separate organ torn out" of the operational services of the Interior Ministry, Federal Antinarcotics Service, and FSB "is also wrong." The head of the Federal Antinarcotics Service's interagency and information activities department, Aleksandr Mikhailov, also rejected the idea of creating a single investigative committee, calling it "counterproductive," newsru.com reported. JB RUSSIA SIGNS NUCLEAR DEAL WITH EGYPT Sergei Kiriyenko, who heads the state nuclear energy agency Rosatom, and Egypt's Energy Minister Hassan Younis signed an agreement in Moscow on March 25, under which Russia will compete in a tender for Egypt's first civilian nuclear power station, Russian and international media reported. The tender is estimated at $1.5 billion-$2 billion. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Russian President Putin, and President-elect Dmitry Medvedev oversaw the signing. Egypt wants to build up to four nuclear power stations, and the international tender to build the first of them may come as early as later in 2008. The daily "Gazeta" noted on March 26 that "signing this agreement was the Egyptian delegation's main purpose in visiting Russia." After talks with Mubarak at the presidential residence at Novo-Ogaryovo, Putin said that Russian officials are consulting with the United States and Middle Eastern countries about holding an international conference on the Middle East in Moscow at an unspecified date (see "RFE/RL Newsline," January 17 and March 20, 2008). He stressed that "if this conference takes place, we want it to be a Moscow conference by definition. A meeting such as this should be an event in its own right." Putin added that "the main thing in our opinion is that the parties concerned stop the violence.... We urge both sides to look to the future and take this as their basis, rather than day-to-day preoccupations." Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently visited the Middle East to enlist support for the conference, which Russia sees as an affirmation of its role as a major player in regional and world affairs. Mubarak said that he looks forward to a Moscow conference in order to end the current "impasse" in the Middle East. According to "The Moscow Times" on March 26, he also said that "he found it difficult to distinguish...Putin from...Medvedev, eliciting a frown from Putin and chuckles from reporters." The daily described the remark as a "political faux pas, [which] cast a brief shadow over Mubarak's two-day visit." The daily noted that possible Russian arms deliveries to Egypt were also discussed, but added that it is not clear if there was any agreement. The United States has long been Egypt's main arms supplier. PM RUSSIA BUYS STAKES IN GERMAN, UKRAINIAN SHIPYARDS The Norwegian shipbuilder Aker Yards ASA announced in Oslo and Rostock on March 25 that it has sold 70 percent of two German and one Ukrainian shipyards to the Russian investment group FLC West for $450 million, the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" reported on March 26. The Baltic yards are located at Wismar and in the Rostock suburb of Warnemuende, while the Black Sea facility is at Mykolayiv. The yards will build specialized ships, especially for Russian oil and gas drilling and transport companies. The deal is expected to be finalized later in 2008. FLC West is based in Luxembourg, with the Russian state holding a 50 percent share, AP reported. The other 50 percent is held by a Cyprus-based group of private shareholders. PM COMBAT JET REPORTEDLY SHOT DOWN BY ANOTHER PLANE Citing unnamed "sources close to the investigation," Interfax and RIA Novosti reported on March 26 that a Russian Air Force Su-25 combat jet was accidentally shot down on March 20 near Vladivostok by a missile fired from another plane, killing the pilot of the first plane. The Defense Ministry has not confirmed the report but said that an investigation is under way. On March 26, Russian news agencies reported that "NATO jets in the region of Alaska escorted" two Tu-95 (Bear) long-range bombers within neutral airspace. In August 2007, President Putin announced the resumption of long-range strategic bomber flights (see "RFE/RL Newsline," August 23, 2007). In public statements, U.S. and NATO officials play down the significance of the Russian flights and the dispatch of NATO aircraft to "escort" the Russian planes (see "RFE/RL Newsline," February 13, 2008). PM PUTIN REPLACES FIRST DEPUTY INTERIOR MINISTER President Putin signed a decree on March 26 replacing Colonel General Aleksandr Chekalin as first deputy interior minister with Lieutenant General Mikhail Sukhodolsky, newsru.com reported. Sukhodolsky has been a deputy minister since 2005. Interfax reported that Chekalin has reached the unspecified mandatory retirement age for his post, which he held since 2004, and was transferred to another, unspecified job. PM ARMENIAN PRESIDENT-ELECT MEETS WITH RUSSIAN COUNTERPART Armenian Prime Minister and President-elect Serzh Sarkisian traveled to Moscow on March 24 for separate talks with Russian President Putin and President-elect Medvedev, Armenian media reported. Sarkisian thanked Putin for his support both in the run-up to the February 19 presidential ballot and during the ensuing protests and violence, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reported. He said he is determined "to do everything to establish stability..., consolidate society, and create an atmosphere of tolerance." He also assured Putin of his commitment to deepen and expand Armenia's already intensive economic and military cooperation with Russia. The pro-government daily "Hayots ashkhar" predicted on March 25 that Moscow's unequivocal expression of support for Sarkisian "is creating a firm basis on which Armenia can rely on and feel more confident in coping with possible international pressure" resulting from the police violence against opposition protesters in Yerevan on March 1-2. LF PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE STAFFER QUESTIONS BASHKORTOSTAN PRESIDENT'S SON A special investigator from the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office traveled late last week to Ufa where he met with Ural Rakhimov, who is director general of Bashneft and the son of Murtaza Rakhimov, Bashkortostan's president since December 1993, "Kommersant" reported on March 26. The investigator's questions to Rakhimov were apparently related to the case of Igor Izmestev, the former Bashkortostan senator apprehended by the FSB in Kyrgzystan in January 2007, and who is charged with organizing several murders and terrorist acts, including the killing of Rakhimov's financial adviser, Valery Speransky (see "RFE/RL Newsline," January 18, 2007). LF REPORTEDLY MUTILATED BODIES OF ALLEGED INGUSH MILITANTS RETURNED TO FAMILIES The bodies of two men and a woman killed by security forces on February 28 in Altiyevo on the northeastern outskirts of Nazran have reportedly been handed back to their families for burial with the internal organs missing, according to ingushetiya.ru on March 25, quoting the Chechen Committee for National Salvation. The woman, Madina Ausheva, was reportedly pregnant. Security officials claimed that that the three were members of an illegal armed formation and opened fire on security forces who sought to detain them (see "RFE/RL Newsline," February 29, 2008). Residents of neighboring houses denied the three resorted to firearms and expressed doubt that they had any links to the armed resistance. Under the controversial Russian law on terrorism, the bodies of "terrorists" are interred in unmarked graves, the location of which is not divulged to their families. Ausheva's brother Ruslan was similarly killed in June 2007 by security forces who claimed, without proof, that he headed an illegal armed formation (see "RFE/RL Newsline," June 18, 2007). LF
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