Would it be foolish to think that all this William Browder/Hermitage stuff would come to an end with just one murdered lawyer?  Not quite.  This latest story from Catherine Belton in the Financial Times is at once frightening, morally outrageous, and embarrassing - as lawyers in London have received death threats by text messages both before and after the Sergei Magnitsky murder.  It really does make me wonder who, if anyone, will step up and take control of the situation.  There are clearly a few influential people within the Kremlin who are not crazy, are generally more rational (or at least decent enough to turn their nose up over such an ugly affair), but so far they have been putting up with this unacceptable behavior of the palace circles.  Almost makes me long for the clan wars days back

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Russian and Chinese companies have signed infrastructure and construction agreements today worth $3.5 billion.  Avtovaz has posted record losses of $659 million for the January-June period, a sour accompaniment to the government's decision to extend the unpopular increased import duties on cars by nine months.  September's sales of 28,109 cars were the lowest seen in the history of the factory, which opened in 1974.  Putin has vouched that the $6.8 billion allocated spending on the APEC summit, to be used improving infrastructure in host city Vladivostok, will not be reduced.  The summit to be held in 2012 will apparently help the area attract $100 billion in investment by 2015.  The head of the State Statistics Service, Vladimir Sokolin, has said in an interview that the Economic Development Ministry plays free and easy with statistics.  Russia's budget deficit this ...

VEB, which holds a blocking state in Vimpelcom, will apparently agree to the merger of the mobile operator with Ukrainian company Kyivstar.  Car sales in Russia fell 52% in September year-on-year, a slight improvement on August's drop of 54%.  State-controlled VEB bank has extended loans for six companies, including Gazprom's oil unit Gazpromneft.  Reuters reports that Italian automaker Fiat is interested in launching its SUV in Russia.  Fiat SpA has said that its CNH unit has signed a letter of intent with truck-maker Kamaz for a joint agricultural and construction equipment project.  The government will provide around $170 million in financial assistance to state-controlled defense industry corporation Oboronprom and titanium producer Vsmpo-Avisma.  Russian Railways has reported that 2008 net income dropped 47% from a year earlier to $2.6 billion.  Russia has placed Hermitage Capital Management ...

Many readers have been following the legal saga of William Browder, Hermitage, and HSBC against Renaissance Capital and certain members of the Russian government alleging a $230 million fraud scheme.  Now we've got our hands on a public filing from the case.  As far as I am aware, this blog is the first to track down this declaration by the lawyer Neil Micklethwaite filed in the Southern District Court of New York supporting a foreign discovery claim on behalf of the plaintiffs.  This is a public legal filing containing allegations which have not yet been ruled on in a court of law, which of course bear no relationship whatsoever to this blog or its authors.  Click here to download

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From Ariel Cohen's contribution to the New York Times:

Furthermore, Medvedev and Kudrin would like to see Russia join the O.E.C.D. Herein lies the rub: Russia today doesn't fit the organization's criteria for property rights, transparency and the rule of law.

Corrupt Russian judges regularly take property away from foreigners, such as Norway's Telenor. Russian law enforcers seized shares of value investors, such as Hermitage Capital, and then banished its owner, William Browder, from Russia. Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partners and staff are facing a second round of trials for made-up crimes.

The St. Petersburg Forum also demonstrated how easily President Medvedev can be upstaged by Putin and Sechin. Putin did not deign to show up at all. Instead, he went to Pikalyovo, a shabby corporate town all but shut down by the crisis. There, on national TV, he tore into the

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