Jason Bush in Forbes suggests that Russia's recovery may be buoyant: 'while the Russian government is still cautiously forecasting 2 percent GDP growth in 2010, many independent economists are already predicting growth of as much as 5 percent next year'.  Oleg Deripaska's heavily-indebted RusAl has made a deal to sell 1.68 million tons of aluminum to Chinese state corporation Norinco over seven years.  Renault COO Patrick Pelata has told the press that whilst the French car giant will support bankruptcy-skirting Avtovaz, the company will not supply the cash booster shot that the Russians allegedly want.  Corporate loan portfolios and overdue corporate loans fell slightly in September, as the ruble gained in value.  The Russian Gold Industrialists Union has announced that gold production rose 14.6% in the first nine months of 2009, year-on-year, an increase they attributed to a number ...

Jason Bush has a devastating piece published in BusinessWeek about the Council of Europe report on Russia's rule of law vacuum.Prosecutors accuse the ex-Yukos managers of embezzling 350 million metric tons of oil, equivalent to Yukos' entire oil output for six years. Defense lawyers and several independent legal observers have expressed bewilderment at the new claims. They note that in their previous trial, the two managers were convicted of underpaying taxes on this same output, implying that it was legal business activity. The alleged embezzlement occurred when Yukos was Russia's largest oil company and one of its most visible companies overall. Now these concerns have been echoed by the author of the Council of Europe report, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a former German Minister of Justice. "The legal justification of the new criminal cases against Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Lebedev has me perplexed," she writes, adding that "any accusation must fulfill ...

Jason Bush at BusinessWeek has a very interesting piece today: Mysterious lawsuits targeting prominent financial institutions could become the latest worry for foreign investors in Russia. Earlier this year, Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund managed by British bank HSBC (HBC), claimed that three of its subsidiaries had been besieged by Russian fraud artists. Hermitage alleged in public statements that a series of bogus suits, based on fake contracts to sell shares, had been filed against the units as part of a scheme to seize ownership of the subsidiaries and reclaim $230 million in taxes previously paid by Hermitage to the Russian government. Russian authorities are investigating these allegations.