Russia 110601 Basic Political Developments

Rails, Uranium Mark Mongolian Visit

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/rails-uranium-mark-mongolian-visit/437892.html
01 June 2011

Interfax

Russia and Mongolia have signed five documents following the official talks between Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Tsakhia Elbegdorj on Tuesday.

The leaders signed a joint Russian-Mongolian statement and other documents, including a memorandum on research cooperation between the two countries' academies of medical sciences, an intergovernmental agreement to create the Ubsunur Hollow Biosphere Reserve, an intergovernmental agreement on the mutual protection of intellectual property in bilateral military-technical cooperation and a protocol of changes to the bilateral agreement of June 6, 1949, setting up the Soviet-Mongolian Ulan Bator Railway.

The enactment of an agreement signed by the Russian and Mongolian governments to establish the Dornod Uran uranium mining enterprise has been held back by procedural issues, Rosatom director Sergei Kiriyenko told journalists Tuesday.

"We have already signed the final framework documents, which have yet to come into force. But it has been slightly delayed by procedural things on Mongolia's part. We have signed an action plan, according to which the Mongolian side is required to compile a list of property and assets it is ready to contribute to joint ventures. But this stage is facing delays today," Kiriyenko said.

"This process has been slow. Colleagues have promised us that it [the process] will be finalized in the near future," he said.

Meanwhile, a consortium of investors including Russian Railways is ready to spend up to $1.5 billion on rail infrastructure in Mongolia if the group wins a bid for the Tavan Tolgoi coal field, the railway said Tuesday.

Russian Railways head Vladimir Yakunin also told journalists that Mongolia would decide on the list of final bidders in June or July for the railway infrastructure project to ship coal from the field.

Mongolia is in the process of deciding how to develop the massive Tavan Tolgoi field.

Russian Railways hopes to receive the $1.5 billion for the Tavan Tolgoi coal project from the state, a source from Russian Railway's top management said.

"We're prepared to invest $1.5 billion in the project if the state gives us the cash," the source said.

The source did not specify the overall cost of the Russian bid.

Tavan Tolgoi is in southern Mongolia, 250 kilometers from the Chinese border and 540 kilometers from Ulan Bator. It is estimated to contain 6.5 billion tons of high-calorific coal — 40 percent of it coking coal. A 400-kilometer railway and power plants will have to be built for it to be fully developed.

Russian Railways on March 9 received official confirmation from Mongolia that a bid by its consortium, which includes the Siberian Coal and Energy Company (SUEK), Korean Resources Corporation, Itochu and Sumitomo, among others, had passed the Tavan Tolgoi tender's pre-qualifying round.

Russian-Mongolian uranium efforts deepen

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/05/31/Russian-Mongolian-uranium-efforts-deepen/UPI-17741306876919/
Published: May 31, 2011 at 5:21 PM

MOSCOW, May 31 (UPI) -- Russia is moving quickly into the Mongolian mining sector.

Mongolia is one of Central Asia's last underdeveloped mineralogical sites and recent amendments to the country's contentious Mining Law have in the past year attracted massive foreign interest.

During the Soviet era Mongolia was a satellite client state of the Soviet Union and since the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991the Russian Federation has managed to retain a significant presence there.

Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom Director Sergei Kiriyenko told journalists that an agreement signed by the Russian and Mongolian governments to establish a uranium mining enterprise Dornod Uran is moving forward despite delays, Agentstvo Voyennykh Novostey news agency reported Tuesday.

Kiriyenko said: "We have already signed the final framework documents, which have yet to come into force. But it has been slightly delayed by procedural things on Mongolia's part. We have signed an action plan, according to which the Mongolian side is required to compile a list of property and assets it is ready to contribute to joint ventures."

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/05/31/Russian-Mongolian-uranium-efforts-deepen/UPI-17741306876919/#ixzz1O0CFjWfd

Slain five were not Chechen, says Russian official

http://www.dawn.com/2011/06/01/slain-five-were-not-chechen-says-russian-official.html

Wednesday 1st June 2011 | Jumadi-us-Sani 28, 1432

By Our Staff Correspondent | From the Newspaper

QUETTA: The Vice Consul of Russian Consulate in Karachi, Mr Tural Dzhavadov, said here on Tuesday that five foreigners who died in firing by police in Quetta two weeks ago were not Chechens.

He had earlier examined the bodies in the morgue of Bolan Medical Collage Hospital. He was accompanied by another Russian diplomat, Mr Alexey V. Falunin. Replying to reporters` questions, Mr Dzhavadov said: “Four of the five persons appear to be Russian nationals and one of them looks like a Tajik. They are not Chechens”.

However, he said that further investigation was needed. He said that it was not yet known how these Russians had entered into Pakistan.

Russia's ruling party seeks state board posts-paper

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/06/01/russia-companies-idUKLDE75001Z20110601
MOSCOW, June 1 | Wed Jun 1, 2011 6:46am BST

(Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's ruling party has proposed its own candidates chair the boards of state-controlled companies such as InterRAO and RusHydro, the Vedomosti newspaper reported on Wednesday.

If approved, the proposal would water down President Dmitry Medvedev's boldest corporate reform: a plan to reduce the state's influence in the economy by purging government officials from the boards of state-controlled companies. [ID:nLDE7341GV]

Vedomosti cited an unidentified party official as saying that Putin had given preliminary approval to the plan to make United Russia party members board chairmen at four state-controlled firms.

The companies include power group InterRAO (IUES.MM), Russia's biggest hydroelectric power producer RusHydro (HYDR.MM) and grid firms MRSK (MRKH.MM) and FSK (FEES.MM).

Medvedev said in late March that top members of Putin's government must leave the boards of firms such as gas giant Gazprom (GAZP.MM) and oil major Rosneft (ROSN.MM) within months.

Some board chiefs are close Putin allies and the order was viewed as a bid by Medvedev to build up clout ahead of a March 2012 election in which both members of the ruling "tandem" have said they may run. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, editing by David Cowell)

Government reshuffles power companies' boards

http://www.bne.eu/dispatch_text15683

Alfa Bank
June 1, 2011

Boris Gryzlov, the Speaker of the Russian State Duma, has sent an official letter to Vladimir Putin with a list of candidates for chairman of the board of state-controlled power companies, including MRSK Holding, RusHydro, Inter RAO and Federal Grid Company, Vedomosti reports today. The move comes in response to President Dmitry Medvedev's announcement in April that all ministers and deputy prime ministers on the board of RusHydro and Inter RAO must be replaced by independent representatives by July 1, and for the remaining state-owned companies by October 1.

Four representatives of United Russia (Vladimir Pekhtin, Georgy Boss, Evgeny Tugolukov and Vladimir Golovlev) have been put forward to replace Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin and Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko as chairman of the board of Inter RAO and MRSK Holding, respectively.

Overall, we treat this news as NEUTRAL for the companies, as the candidates are familiar with the power industry, and we believe the market already expects these changes to companies' boards.

Alexander Kornilov

12:05 01/06/2011ALL NEWS

Suspected killer of journalist on wanted list since 1997.

http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c154/155221.html

1/6 Tass 126

MOSCOW, June 1 (Itar-Tass) — The suspected killer of Novaya Gazeta observer Anna Politkovskaya has been on the wanted list since 1997, a Moscow law-enforcement source told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.

"Police have been looking for Ruslan Makhmudov since August 1997. The Investigative Committee suspects him of involvement in murder, weapons- and explosives trafficking, obstruction to the right to freedom of conscience and religion," the officer said.

On Tuesday, Chechnya Interior Minister Ruslan Alkhanov told Tass that Makhmudov had been "detained in the republic's Achkhoi-Martan district by police, jointly with agents of the regional Federal Security Service department and servicemen of the temporary Interior Ministry’s group in the North Caucasus."

He was detained in his parents' house.

Deputy editor-in-chief of the Novaya Gazeta Sergei Sokolov said the arrest of the suspect gives a good opportunity to the investigators to identify all the perpetrators of the crime.

"It's a good opportunity to expedite the trial of the culprits and identify a larger number of the person involved. We congratulate the investigators, because Makhmudov, who has been on the international wanted list, forged a foreign travel passport, traveled abroad and then came back. Clearly, somebody has been helping him," Sokolov said.

For his part, Murad Musayev, the lawyer of Makhmudov's brother, also implicated in the journalist murder case, said the suspect wanted to turn himself in to the law-enforcement authorities.

"He got tired of running, and wanted to report to the investigator voluntarily, but police detained him first," the lawyer said underlining that "everybody knew that Makhmudov was in Chechnya, but they were looking for him in Belgium for some reason, imitating a search."

Novaya Gazeta observer Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down on October 7, 2006, in the entrance to her apartment house as she was returning home. The investigators said her professional activity was the motive behind the murder.

Charges of involvement in the murder were brought against former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov and brothers Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov. Proceedings against Rustam Makhmudov, who the investigators said was the perpetrator of the murder, made a separate case.

On February 20, 2009, the Moscow district military court acquitted three defendants, on the strength of jurors' verdict. On June 25, 2009, the Supreme Court overturned the verdict and sent the case for retrial, which began on August 5, 2009.

The case then was returned to prosecutors for pooling with the main case against the perpetrator and suspected mastermind.

Sergei Khadzhikurbanov was sentenced to eight years in February 2010 within a 350,000-dollar extortion case.

In October 2010, the Investigative Committee reported that it had "ascertained the identity of other persons who might be involved in the murder." It requested a number of European countries for legal assistance.

The deadline for investigation into the criminal case was extended again in February 2011.