Rosnano Chief Made $6 Million in 2013
Rusnano chief Anatoly Chubais earned 207 million rubles ($6 million) in 2013 — 4.6 percent less than in 2012, according to a declaration of income published on Rosnano's website on Monday.
Chubias, the architect of Russia's helter-skelter privatization drive in the 1990s, owns a 175.8 square meter apartment, drives a BMW X5 and owns a Yamaha snowmobile, the declaration said.
Earlier this month, the company reported losses in 2013 of 39.9 billion rubles ($1.1 billion) in 2013, mostly due to huge mark-downs on the value of its portfolio of investments in the Russian high-tech industry, which have a nominal value of 132 billion rubles ($3.85 billion).
According to the declaration, Chubias donated 7.3 million rubles ($214,000) from his own pocket to charity in 2013. His wife earned 5.2 million rubles ($150,000) last year. (MT)
Lithuania Plans to End Reliance on Gazprom With Statoil LNG Deal
Lithuania is close to signing its first liquefied natural gas, or LNG, purchase with Norway's Statoil, the prime minister and energy companies said, which would end Russian firm Gazprom's monopoly as its supplier.
The deal, if finalized, would help the Baltic state reduce its total dependence on pipeline gas imports from Russia, its former master in the Soviet Union, which Lithuania sees as a top risk to its national security.
"We have agreed on the main commercial terms [with Statoil], and we are now negotiating the technical details," Dominykas Tuckus, the head of Litgas, a gas trading arm of state-owned energy group Lietuvos Energija, said Monday. "We plan to complete negotiations in June."
Statoil confirmed that talks were in an advanced stage, with contract documents pending finalization and approval.
"We want to finalize the deal as soon as possible, with the first deliveries starting in January 2015," Morten Eek, a spokesman for Statoil, said. (Reuters)
Central Bank Closes 9 Ukrainian Banks in Crimea
The Central Bank on Monday ordered a further nine Ukrainian banks to cease the majority of their operations on the Crimean peninsula, citing a failure to fulfill their obligations to account holders, the regulator said in an online statement.
The Central Bank had already banned at least 10 other Ukrainian banks from working in Crimea since the peninsula was annexed by Moscow in March.
Monday's decision prohibits the nine targeted lenders from performing banking operations there, with the exception of the transfer of assets and liabilities.
The banks in question are Oshchadbank, Marfin Bank, Ukrsotsbank, UkrSibbank, Delta Bank, Gorodskoi Kommercheskyi Bank, Bank Forum, Avtokrazbank and Platinum Bank. (MT)
