MOSCOW, October 16 (RIA Novosti) Russian environmental watchdog becomes Kremlin's universal tool /Vneshtorgbank increases its EADS stake to 6% /Deutsche Bank set to take on Yukos debt/Gazprom "forgets" about European gas prices for Ukraine/Kozlov's killers find police protection
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Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Russian environmental watchdog becomes Kremlin's universal tool
The Federal Service for the Oversight of Natural Resources, Russia's environmental watchdog, may have become one more instrument for the Kremlin's economic policy. At any rate, the service, whose role had until now been minimal, is now intervening in multibillion-dollar projects with growing zeal.
Its latest victim is private oil-producing giant LUKoil. The service's deputy head Oleg Mitvol said on Friday that development licenses for 19 deposits in 11 areas in Komi in the northwest Urals might be revoked from LUKoil for violating environmental legislation.
In recent years environmental protection has ceased to be viewed as a straightforward defense of ecosystems. The market now receives news on environmental violations as painfully as back-tax claims. The environmental watchdog is stepping up its interference in economic projects, and the effects of this is comparable to, and sometimes bigger than, using tax agencies to exert state pressure on undesirable businesses structures.
The new instrument for the state's agenda should simplify relations between the Russian government and foreign companies. Most of them have avoided using tax optimization schemes, so the state has been unable to put tax pressure on them, unlike Russian companies.
In addition, the new "environmental" reasons for the pressure sound better to the Western public, among which environmental concerns are high. For example, oil deliveries were stopped without much ado to Lithuania's Mazeikiu Nafta refinery after the Lithuanian government sold a controlling stake in it to PKN Orlen, the largest oil refiner in Poland and central Europe, and not to Russian bidders.
This summer the environmental method was used against the all-foreign Sakhalin 2 oil and gas project in the country's Far East. Tax agencies were unlikely to find violations in the project, developed under a production sharing agreement, which stipulates a highly transparent tax mechanism that cannot be revised.
Vedomosti
Vneshtorgbank increases its EADS stake to 6%
Russia's state-owned bank Vneshtorgbank is continuing to buy up shares in the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), having increased its stake to 6%, becoming the third largest shareholder, ahead of one of the founders, Spain.
The bank took advantage of an almost 45% drop in the EADS share price in the summer to make its purchases. By August, EADS' market capitalization had soared to $24 billion, only to slip more than 10% again by October. Vneshtorgbank used this fall to raise its stake to about 6%, said a source close to the bank. The first 5% cost the bank around $1 billion. The additional 1% required about $225 million, with all deals financed by Vneshtorgbank itself, the source said.
Vneshtorgbank declined to comment on the issue. But a source close to EADS said the bank's stake is approaching 7%.
Now that Vneshtorgbank has become EADS' second largest shareholder after France and Germany, this is worrying Spain and Germany. Last week Spain's Economics Minister Pedro Solbers and Hamburg Mayor Ole von Beust announced that their countries would also expand their stakes. Von Beust even said that if necessary the Hamburg administration would buy EADS shares. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said EADS must find "reliable shareholders" if DaimlerChrysler cuts its stake.
All this looks like hysteria and is only natural, since Russia does not fully know itself how it can use the EADS stake in its own interests, said Gennady Sukhanov, an analyst with Troika Dialog.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week after meeting with Merkel that Vneshtorgbank could simply sell its stake if EADS and the United Aircraft Building Corporation (UABC), currently being set up, fail to agree on close cooperation.
EADS is now waiting for these agreements, and is even delaying the industrial launch of a program to manufacture new Airbus-350 XWB liners, with UABC willing to join, said a source close to EADS.
A Kremlin official interviewed by the paper, and executives from the Economic Development and Trade and the Industry and Energy ministries, declined to offer predictions as to when the parties will reach agreement.
Kommersant
Deutsche Bank set to take on Yukos debt
Viktor Gerashchenko, board chairman of bankrupt Russian oil company Yukos, said Sunday that Germany's Deutsche Bank was negotiating taking on Yukos' debts and gaining a controlling stake in the company.
If successful, Deutsche Bank would have the final say in Russia's main corporate conflict - the confrontation between energy giant Gazprom and state-owned oil company Rosneft.
Two independent sources in investment banks said last week that Deutsche Bank and its Russian division Deutsche UFG were interested in Yukos assets.
Gerashchenko said he had received a letter from Deutsche UFG CEO Ilya Shcherbovich last week telling him the bank would like to negotiate the purchase of the Yukos controlling stake, and was ready to take on corporate debts.
The Yukos CEO said he did not know in whose interests Deutsche Bank is acting.
"We advised them to contact Group Menatep director Tim Osborne; I do not know whether they negotiated with him or not, but an amicable agreement is always possible," Gerashchenko told the paper.
Brokerage analysts said Gazprom and Rosneft had every motivation to buy a controlling stake in Yukos, to pay the company's debts and to prevent its sale.
Bank of Moscow analyst Vladimir Vedeneyev said both companies were in a position to make such an offer. Rosneft would find it hard to finance this deal, whereas it would not be difficult for Gazprom. Rosneft will have stronger positions if Yukos is auctioned off. Talks with Group Menatep were unlikely to succeed, Vedeneyev told the paper.
Deutsche Bank, an official Gazprom strategic consultant since 2004, has advised the company on two major deals, namely, the sale of 10.74% of its shares to Rosneftegaz and a fairness option regarding the purchase of oil company Sibneft.
The German bank will find itself in the center of a key Russian economic conflict next year, i.e. strategic Gazprom-Rosneft rivalry for Russian oil assets and for political influence.
Gazeta
Gazprom "forgets" about European gas prices for Ukraine
Both Kiev and Moscow are now keeping quiet about the Russian president's pledge to raise the natural gas price for Ukraine to $230 per 1,000 cubic meters. Russia has actually reneged on the "European price forming principles" for Ukraine it spoke about last year, and has switched to privileged prices.
The so-called market approach to Ukraine that Russian energy giant Gazprom has taken actually implies supplying gas at a loss. In the fourth quarter of 2006, Russia will buy Turkmen gas for $100 per 1,000 cubic meters and sell it to Ukraine at $95, not $230.
At the same time, the Ukrainian government is reducing gas tariffs for domestic customers in the fourth quarter. From November 1, gas prices for the population will be cut by almost 18% from $82 to $67 per 1,000 cubic meters. In contrast, the Russian government is pursuing a policy of increasing gas prices for the population. Next year, gas tariffs for the population will rise 15% on average.
The reasons for the sudden gas goodwill between Moscow and Kiev are clear. Moscow does not want Yanukovych's government to be destabilized. In turn, Kiev would be glad to resume the traditional scheme of pledges in exchange for cheaper gas from Russia.
To preserve Moscow's image, Kiev has invented an original explanation of Gazprom's backing down from European market prices: Ukraine will allegedly not buy Russian gas in 2007. Ukrainian Fuel and Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko said his country would use "Turkmen, Kazakh and Uzbek gas" instead.
In reality, no Asian gas supplies have so far been made to Ukraine, which is still receiving gas from Russia. Gazprom pays for all Turkmen gas, which becomes Russian property.
No terms for resuming privileged prices for Russian gas have yet been coordinated. Yanukovych's gas lobbying may bring Russia and Gazprom tangible results in the longer term.
However, former Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov believes Russia "should not have challenged gas supply terms in the CIS": having destroyed Russia's credibility as a secure gas supplier in Europe, Gazprom will have to yield to the former Soviet republics as well.
Kommersant
Kozlov's killers find police protection
The murder on September 13 of Andrei Kozlov, first deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank, has been solved thanks to the greediness of the agent linking the contractor to the hired killers. Instead of paying the killers, he decided to get rid of them, and so forced the men to seek police protection.
The suspected killers say the conflict between Kozlov and the man who ordered his murder lasted two months.
Last week, the Moscow courts arrested three men suspected of murdering Kozlov. They are Ukrainian citizens Andrei Polovinkin, Maxim Proglyada and Alexander Belokopytov, all of them aged 35.
All of the three men were registered as "self-reported criminals", although only one of them actually came to a police station, and the other two were brought to the station after the first man, whose name is being withheld, reported the crime.
Investigators say the criminals, although they have admitted to the crime, are not telling the whole story. Polovinkin said he had met with the agent only twice and the meetings were short, and held in the dark, which is why he cannot identify him. The other two men say they never met the agent.
The agent could have been found by tracking the three men's telephone calls, but the Ukrainians said they had disposed of their SIM cards "in a forest" and no longer remember the agent's phone number or their own.
However, there is a slim chance that the General Prosecutor's Office will find the man, because the killers' statements have narrowed the circle of potential suspects. Before, they suspected the heads of dozens of Russian banks deprived of licenses because of Kozlov's recent initiative. Now the investigators will focus only on those who lost the licenses in the two months before the murder.
