Search Results for: Russia

BY ALAN OSBORN

OUT of 60 recommendations made in a report last December by the European Parliament on strategies to prevent human trafficking only one specifically mentioned money laundering and even there the message was essentially "carry on as before" and "keep your eyes open".…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

THE MEDIA rush to pick up on the revival of nuclear energy as a serious UK option, made plain in the Department of Trade and Industry’s recent Energy Review consultation document, has diverted attention from which tail will, in practice, be wagging the UK energy dog over the coming months.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Helsinki

BY its own lights Finland is a model of Nordic virtue and is snooty about crime in neighbouring countries round the Baltic. But Interpol begs to differ, ranking Finnish criminality as high for an industrialised economy.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN ENVIRONMENTAL impact assessment from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has given a qualified approval to a proposed gold mine project on the Russia-China border in Siberia. The EBRD has concluded the impact of Russian company Berezitovy Rudnik’s plans to exploit the Berezitovy gold deposit, in Tynda district, Amur region, "will be at a predominantly local level with a moderate degree of threat to the environment".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IF there was ever a region where a mining company could build an open cast gold mine without being bothered by environmental activists, it surely has to be deepest Siberia. Lightly populated, full of scrappy forest, and often scenically uninspiring, this vast region almost seems designed for industries deemed undesirable by wildlife-loving urbanites.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

NEW tough fuel and road transport pollution standards have been proposed for the European Union (EU) by the European Commission, removing a loophole enabling sports utility vehicles (SUVs) to be covered by looser emission limits currently allowed for commercial vans.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), of the World Bank, is supporting a US$58 million investment programme for upgrading the Vladpivo brewery, Trudovoye, near Vladivostok, in Russia’s far east. Working with Detroit Investments and the Alfa Group’s A-1 Group Limited, the IFC will lend Roubles 255 million (Euro 7.5 million) to brewery owner Vladpivo and make a US$5.3 million equity investment in the company’s parent, the Cyprus-registered Far East Brewing Company.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

The Austrian presidency of the EU is calling for a negotiated solution to the Russia /Moldova natural gas dispute reflecting deepening concern in Brussels about Europe’s increasing dependence on potentially unreliable outside energy sources. Russia supplies a third of the EU’s gas imports (a fifth of all gas used in the EU) with Germany, Italy and France the main buyers, though a number of EU countries are critically dependent on supplies sent by the Russian gas monopoly Gazprom through the Ukrainian pipeline: 100% for Slovakia, for instance, 92% for Greece and between 60 and 75% for the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Austria.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency, or MIGA, is the international organisation companies turn to when they want to invest in a jurisdiction where their assets might not be that safe. Mining companies have long used MIGA to cover risks that are too tasty for the private insurance industry, and the agency has issued 58 guarantees for the sector since it was formed in 1988.…

BY LIZ HALL, in Alicante

SINCE March 2005, Operation White Whale, an extensive international anti-money-laundering operation spearheaded by the Spain’s National Police (the Policia Nacional), has produced the arrest of 57 people and the laundering of at least Euro 250 million euros obtained through illegal drug trafficking, according to Spain’s Interior Ministry (Ministerio del Interior).…