Fake Lipton Makers Busted
Police and migration officials have busted an underground tea-bagging operation in the Moscow region, which was producing fake Lipton in unsanitary conditions, rights owner Unilever Rus said Monday, Interfax reported.
The Federal Migration Service and economic crimes officers from the Interior Ministry carried out the raid in the region’s Vidnovsky district to check passports of workers officially registered there at construction sites.
They discovered a group of illegal immigrants from Uzbekistan who were producing handmade, counterfeit bags of Lipton-brand tea, worth about 1 million rubles ($32,000) per month, Interfax reported. (MT)
Kremlin Hears Forest Gripes
As complaints mount about the newest draft of the Forest Code, including from billionaire Oleg Deripaska, the government could consider another revision, President Dmitry Medvedev said Monday in Ulan-Ude.
“What Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska has already said here about the Forest Code is not the first signal we’ve gotten that the series of changes we made to the Forest Code aren’t doing what we intended,” Medvedev said, Interfax reported.
He said he has heard complaints from small and big business alike. “If we didn’t get it quite right, let’s fix it. That’s better and more honest than trying to act like we’re following the law,” Medvedev said. (MT)
More Coal Needed in Siberia
Siberian power plants will need an additional 6.5 million tons of coal this winter after an accident damaged the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric plant, Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said Monday, Interfax reported.
The Transportation Ministry and Russian Railways are already organizing the extra shipments, he said.
(Bloomberg)
Sberbank 7-Month Off 90%
Sberbank posted a 6.8 billion ruble ($212.9 million) net profit to Russian accounting standards for January-July, a 90 percent decline from the same period last year, the bank reported Monday.
Sberbank issues a monthly report on its results to Russian accounting standards and analysts use them as a guidepost to trends on the bank’s performance to international accounting standards. Sberbank says it can remain profitable this year. (Reuters)
VTB Directors for Usmanov
Metalloinvest Management, which runs billionaire Alisher Usmanov’s iron ore company, named two directors representing VTB Group to the board after an agreement to borrow from the lender last week, the company said Monday.
Metalloinvest named VTB’s Kirill Aladyshev and Andrei Musatov to the board, it said. (Bloomberg)
For the Record
- Egypt said Monday that it has released a 56,000-ton cargo of Russian wheat to its importer after the shipment was detained for being in breach of contract terms. (Bloomberg)
- Vneshekonombank gave preliminary approval for a subordinated loan of 29.9 billion rubles ($953 million) to Alfa Bank, Interfax reported Monday, citing a source in the state development bank. (Bloomberg)
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