Search Results for: Russia

BY ALAN OSBORN
*Finland is the world’s most “honest” country according to Transparency International;

*New British laws will ban payments made to people just for performing their official duties;

*In countries where bribery of foreign officials is a crime, penalties range from a one-year jail sentence (Norway) to life imprisonment (South Africa);

*Half the countries replying to the UN said their legal systems did not make it impossible to obtain tax benefits for foreign payments that would constitute bribery;

*Under American law companies can make payments for “routine government action” such as obtaining licences and permits abroad.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development is planning to lend Euro 15.9 million to Italy’s Duferco, to fund buy-outs of minority shareholders in Russian grain oriented steel producer VIZ-Stahl. It is already controlled and managed by Duferco, and the bank thinks full-ownership would lead to “full commercial development” by a company “with a clear strategic view on the steel sector and proven ability in acquiring and turning around steel plants.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IF there’s one thing guaranteed to get up the nose of most livestock farmers, it is bleeding heart animal rights campaigners claiming that they do not give a fig about welfare. And this is especially so when that most contentious of topics, live exports, is brought up.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development has drawn up plans to lend lending Russia’s largest automobile glass manufacturer US$ 25 million; Bor Glass Works, near Nizhny Novgorod, is to spend the money on improving its auto and flat glass production and repairing a furnace.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CASPIAN Sea countries Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Russia and Iran have launched a coordinated programme for surveying and managing sturgeon stocks, paving the way for resuming the US$100 million caviar industry, the United Nations Environment Programme has announced. The trade had been halted by UN conservation agency CITES.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PRINTING equipment and supplies imported from the United States are to be a focus of retaliatory tariffs imposed by the European Union following the erection of controversial ‘safeguard’ duties by Washington to protect its steel industry.

The European Commission has announced that it is asking EU ministers to approve a selected range of products, where the levying of duty will cause the most pain to US exporters, in a bid to try and force the Bush administration to lift its tariffs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RADIO navigation is to be improved in the Gulf of Finland, notably in Russian waters, because of a planned European Bank for Reconstruction and Development-funded project. The Maritime Port Authority of St Petersburg has formally applied for a loan from the bank for a US$5.4 million project to set up three radio towers on the islands of Gogland, Sommers and Skar, part of a regional navigational safety project.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank has approved a US$5.6 million credit to fund a Pilot Fishery Development Project, to boost the development of fish farming in Albania, one of Europe’s poorest countries. The scheme also aims at improving the country’s wild fishery sector.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE RUSSIAN government has banned imports of American chicken amid concerns about the number of chemicals used in the US poultry market. American suppliers had commanded a 50 per cent share of the Russian chicken market, estimated at two million tonnes a year.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A SIGNIFICANT extension of airport security measures across the 43 countries of the Council of Europe, including for the first time three republics of the former Soviet Union, has now become a real possibility.

The Council’s economic committee has agreed to recommend to its member governments a range of sweeping airport reforms based on the AVSEC package drawn up by the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC).…