Moskovsky Komsomolets
Man who helped cannibal leads police to victim’s head
MK has uncovered new details on the Moscow cannibal case. Detectives from Moscow’s Western Administrative District have located an individual who saw the cannibal kill and dismember Muscovite Ilya Yegorov. The eyewitness helped the police find Yegorov’s head in the Fili Park of Culture and Leisure.
Western Administrative District Detective Pavel Molchanov told MK that after hours of questioning by homicide-department officers, unhinged cannibal Nikolai Shadrin cracked. Shadrin named a third person who saw him dismember his victim after killing him with a single blow from a military shovel.
The police have declined to name the eyewitness, a young electrician, who was Shadrin’s friend, in the interests of the ongoing investigation. It is thought that Shadrin killed Yegorov for making sexual advances. The eyewitness did not contact the police earlier because he was terrified of Shadrin. But when the detectives paid him a visit, he revealed everything he knew about what had happened. Yegorov, Shadrin and the eyewitness were all in Shadrin’s apartment on the day of the murder. Yegorov apparently started making sexual advances to Shadrin and the third man. Shadrin finally lost it, grabbed a razor-sharp military shovel and stabbed the homosexual in the heart. Yegorov was killed instantly.
The sadist then told the eyewitness to help him dismember Yegorov and get his remains out of the apartment. The electrician accompanied the cannibal to Fili Park where Shadrin left Yegorov’s head. The cannibal did not even bother to bury the remains. Yegorov’s face was sticking out of the ground, and his decomposing profile could be seen several meters away. Investigators still have no reason to consider Shadrin’s friend an accomplice and think it more likely that he followed the maniac out of fear for his own life.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Washington considers swapping Jackson-Vanik for Magnitsky Act
By Edward Lozansky, President of the American University in Moscow, Professor at the World Politics Faculty of Lomonosov Moscow State University
Exchanging spies for dissidents was once an accepted international practice: take the cases of Abel for Powers, Bukovsky for Corvalán and Chapman for Sutyagin. Now, or so the rumor goes, Washington is considering something similar: the Jackson-Vanik amendment for the “Magnitsky Act.”
Before the details – some history. On April 18 a lawsuit was filed in Washington to prove that President Obama has the constitutional right to annul the Jackson-Vanik amendment without a vote in the U.S. Congress.
The U.S. lawyers we hired to examine the notorious amendment signed by President Henry Ford in 1975 said it should no longer apply to Russia. It denies favored-nation status to any country that lacks a free-market system and restricts emigration: neither condition applies to Russia today.
Barack Obama, like his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, have made similar noises in the past, always pointing out that any such change requires a Congress vote. However, many lawmakers seem reluctant to act on this. Instead they busy themselves digging up new complaints against Russia ranging from the rational to the absolutely baseless – none of which bear any relation to the contested amendment.
The legal community remains divided on the issue. Over a month has passed and the White House has not commented, even although it only has 60 days to respond. Officials in Moscow have also refrained from commenting on the process, but seize any available opportunity to demand that Washington repeals this amendment.
As ever, help comes unexpectedly, in this case from some of America’s most ardent critics of Russia. Senator Richard Perle stated that the continued application of Jackson-Vanik to Russia was in direct violation of U.S. law.
Last week, 14 U.S. senators submitted a bill to ban 60 Russian officials considered to be related to the Magnitsky case, and other officials accused of gross human rights violations, from entering the United States. It appears Congress and White House officials are trying to bring both acts together into one deal: letting everyone save face.
As for outcomes, there are three likely scenarios. First: Obama could declare that Jackson-Vanik no longer applies to Russia, making a landmark breakthrough in U.S.-Russian relations and boosting the “reset.” Or, White House lawyers could overrule the lawsuit, triggering a chain of appeals and a protracted legal process that would cast doubt on Obama’s commitment to improving relations with Russia.
The third, preferred, option is a simultaneous Congress vote for the cancellation of Jackson-Vanik and for the Magnitsky Act. That would relieve the United States of an obsolete law that seriously hinders bilateral trade, while at the same time helping Russia fight corruption and protect whistleblowers of Magnitsky’s caliber.
Essentially, our lawsuit gives Obama a perfect chance to break this tangle once and for all, which the U.S president would surely be a fool to miss.
Moskovskiye Novosti
Putin urged to depreciate the ruble
Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin are still at loggerheads on oil and gas sector taxes.
The Finance Ministry proposes raising mineral tax and cancelling property tax preferences to increase budget revenues within three years. Sechin and the Energy Ministry argue that raising the forecast for crude oil prices and depreciating the ruble would achieve the same goal.
Sechin presented these proposals to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in a report based on the Energy Ministry calculations.
The Finance Ministry thinks the tax burden on the oil and gas sector should be increased by 867 billion rubles ($31 billion) over the next three years. It wants to double the mineral tax rate in 2012 and 2013 to 529 rubles and 558 rubles respectively, to cancel property tax preferences for large companies and to cut bonus depreciation to 10% from 30% from 2013.
These proposals contradict the approved development program for the fuel and energy sector, Sechin’s report says. A higher mineral tax for gas producers would double the gap between the profitability of deliveries to domestic and foreign markets to 12 percentage points (pp), decreasing Gazprom’s profitability by 6 pp and that of independent gas producers by 9 pp.
If the property tax preferences granted to the state-controlled operators of pipelines, electricity grids and railways are cancelled, Transneft and Gazprom will have little option but to raise fees or cut their investment programs. Neither would benefit the government.
The bonus depreciation allows companies to cut their taxes by 30% of the cost of their new assets. The report goes on to warn that cutting it to 10% will worsen Russia’s investment climate.
This newspaper’s sources in the Energy Ministry and government say Putin has rejected the proposal to cancel property ownership tax-breaks. Consultations regarding the tax on gas production and bonus depreciation are underway.
Sechin and the Energy Ministry have suggested other ways to boost budget revenues. An increase of the U.S. dollar exchange rate by 1.20 rubles in 2012 would earn the budget an additional 200 billion rubles ($7.16 billion) in the oil sector alone.
The Economic Development Ministry’s official forecast puts the average dollar exchange rate at 27.90 rubles in 2012. An increase in the oil price from $93 to $110-$120 per barrel, as forecast by the International Energy Agency (IEA), will bring the budget between 1 trillion ($36 billion) and 1.6 trillion rubles ($57 billion).
The introduction of duties on gas exports to Ukraine and on oil exports to Kazakhstan combined should bring the budget an additional 194 billion rubles ($6.9 billion).
High oil prices and ruble depreciation are contradicting options, said Alfa Bank’s chief economist Natalia Orlova. The ruble is currently strengthening due to rising oil prices. The Central Bank’s only tool to weaken the national currency is printing more money, a step it is unlikely to take. As for taxes, they will be certainly raised, she said.
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