Saying gold assets should be accessible "for every man," entrepreneur German Sterligov is refashioning his Anti-Crisis Settlement and Accounting Center into the International Reserve Settlement Center, which will include a combination gold exchange and depository.
The gold center will be an extension of the settlement center, also known by its Russian acronym, ARTTs. In addition, it will have an exchange for both buying and selling gold, a depository and a secure logistics service, Sterligov told The Moscow Times.
Unlike the New York Mercantile Exchange, Sterligov's market will provide nontraders with the ability to buy and sell gold.
"We have created a commodity exchange … for normal people, for every man," he said Monday.
Profits in the new gold center aren't essential, he said. Instead, his goal is to create a new system that "will solve the problems" of transporting and trading gold.
Sterligov — known for advocating old-fashioned solutions like barter and farming to modern economic problems — is no stranger to unconventional ventures. He co-founded Russia's first private commodity exchange in 1990, and in the early 2000s he ran a coffin company with the slogan: "You Don't Need Workouts or Aerobics to Fit Into Our Coffins."
He founded the Anti-Crisis Settlement and Accounting Center in 2008 to help companies ride out the global economic crisis by paying for goods and services in kind. From his headquarters in Moskva-City, Sterligov sought to develop a network of affiliates around Russia for his barter system.
But the center had several bank accounts frozen in December after the Moscow Arbitration Court upheld a lawsuit filed by one of the center's partners.
Sterligov said Monday that the accounts were only blocked for a day and that he had settled with the former partner. He conceded that it would be more difficult to attract customers after the negative press from ARTTs' problems.
"There was a kind of anti-advertising," he said, adding that even bad publicity is publicity.
If his resume is any indication, the rebranding project shouldn't be a problem for Sterligov. A jet-setter in the post-communist days, he gave up a luxurious existence for the woods outside of Moscow after a failed presidential bid in 2004 and other political campaigns.
He told The Moscow Times in January 2009 that he moved to the forest in 2004 after selling all of his holdings. "I had to pay back huge debts from my election campaigns," Sterligov recounted.
On Monday, he declined to discuss his personal assets or what remains of his former fortune, saying only: "I have very little left."
The link to ARTTs on his personal web site, Stergiloff.ru, now redirects to the International Reserve Settlement System.