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Nevermind that Itera president Igor Makarov had the gall to claim that he is "fed up" with all the speculation about Itera's questionable ties to Gazprom and to complain that such conjecture "disturbs our ... normal, objective work." We'll forgive Makarov his petulance if he'll forgive us our understandable dissatisfaction with the sketchy and evasive information that his company provided.
If Itera thinks this single press release will ease pressure on it to come clean, it is mistaken. This thing raises a lot more questions than it answers, and we still need to know the basics: Who is getting rich on Russia's gas and who set them up to do it?
The crux of the controversy surrounding Itera is its relationship with Gazprom and with Gazprom's managers. Itera's "miraculous" growth provides plenty of reasonable grounds to suspect that Gazprom has squandered or stolen billions of dollars worth of Russia's resources in what would appear to be a thinly veiled effort to cheat the state, which controls 38 percent of Gazprom.
Such suspicions have even taken root in Gazprom's board, although oddly not among those members who supposedly represent the state's interests.
Minority shareholders, though, have called repeatedly for an independent audit of the Itera-Gazprom connection.
Like the rest of us, those shareholders would like to know exactly why Gazprom's gas production has fallen over recent years just as Itera's has increased.
Itera's statement this week merely outlined a vague system of trusts that control its shares. The company claimed that only Itera employees are beneficiaries of those trusts and that no "Gazprom managers, their children or relatives" are among them. However, after facing years of stonewalling, we need a lot more than mere verbal assurances.
Until a believable, independent audit such as minority shareholders have called for is carried out ?€” one that details the history of the company as well as its current status ?€” with the full and willing cooperation of Itera management, the company's "normal" work will continue to be dogged by our impertinent conjectures.
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