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The Director-General of LLC "Gazflot" –Aleksandr Yakovlevich Mandel

Gazprom’s delegation chaired by Yaroslav Golko, Member of the Management Committee, Head of the Investment & Construction Department paid a working visit to Vyborg Shipyard

Maritime Hydraulics

1) Actually a consortium?????????

2) Veyborg (Vyborg Shipyard at the Vyborg, Russia shipyard)

-close with Putin?

Chairman of the Board - Georgy A. Poryadin

General Director - Valeriy G.Levchenko

Also seen in the town was the youthful Alexander Bobovnikov, a coal tycoon from Kuzbass who owns the ports of Vyborg and Visotsk and who took advantage of free time in his new mansion in Tuscany to hatch plans to launch a film festival in St. Petersburg next year.

The ports of Vyborg and Vysotsk in the Baltic are controlled by Rosa Holding. Behind Rosa stands an up-and-coming businessman, Alexandre Bobovnikov, a 35-year-old who holds a degree from the St. Petersburg medical faculty. He went to the Kouzbass region in 2000 and was quickly made boss of the coal company Erunaskovskaya Ugolnaia Kompania and the Prokopiev Ugol holding concern. Incidentally, Bobovnikov has just bought a property at Forte dei Marmi in Tuscany and rumour has it that he insists on fresh fish being delivered to him from Italy every day.

owned by the son of a businessman close to President Vladimir Putin, to supply rigs.

Speculations are now running high as to why the Baltic, and not the White Sea, yard was preferred by the Shtokman license owner. Among the possible versions are capacity problems at Sevmash, as well as the company’s repeated failure to meet deadlines. Also personal connections between President Putin and the owners of the Vyborg plant has been mentioned as a possible explanation.

According to Korabelnaya Storona, the newly appointed head of Sevmash, Mr. Nikolay Kalistratov, has now addressed Gazprom with a compromise proposal. According to the company head, the Vyborg and the Sevmash yards should construct one of the platforms each. The company with the best final result should subsequently get the contract for the remaining two platforms.

KOVALCHUK

-Has his own clan in the gov

-The bank's majority shareholder, Yury Kovalchuk, is considered to be Putin's friend since being his next-door neighbor in the summer house cooperative Ozero in the 1990s.

The owner of the Rossia bank, Yuri Kovalchuk, continues to strengthen his position in the Gazprom galaxy. In late March it was learned that Alexander Abramkov, 29, was named one of the vice presidents of Gazpromneft.Up to then, he had occupied the function of deputy director general of theinvestment firm Abros,a subsidiary of the Rossia bank. Four months after the dismissal of itspresident, Alexander Ryazanov,Gazpromneft is thereby tipping a bit more into the sphere of influence of Vladimir Putin’s“business circle”. Toward the end of February Russian media had confirmed that crude oiltransactions for the company would henceforth be assured by Gunvor,the Swiss firm belonging to trader Gennady Timchenko(RI n°43 of November 10), who had frequented the Russian president in the KGBduring the 1980s. The list of veterans of Yuri Kovalchuk’s bank occupying high positions is visibly growing.

It already included Andrei Fursenko(Education minister), Vladimir Yakunin(president of the railways), Vitaly Savelev (vice minister of economic development and commerce), Yuri Shamalov,the president of Gazfond,the Gazprom pension fund. The son of Yuri Kovalchuk, Boris, for his part hasworked since the spring of 2006 with Dmitry Medvedev.

In the Kovalchuk family, it’s primarily Yuri who’s gotten top billing in recent months. After having taken control of twonational television channels (REN-TV and TRK-Petersburg), the boss of Rossia bank is currently in negotiation to buy the press group Rodionov (Russia Intelligence of May 7, 2007). Yuri Kovalchuk had increased his influence in Gazprom by buying the fund manager, Leader, which manages part of the pensions for the gas giant. Rossia bank also holds, since 2004, the former Gazprom insurance firm, SOGAZ. Gennady Timchenko, shareholder in Rossia bank and long-time partner of Yuri Kovalchuk, also took over control of Gazprom oil trade through the trading company GUNVOR. Rather discreet up to now, Mikhail Kovalchuk, 61, has become quite active in the wings in Moscow. Physicist, like his brother, he has been director general of the prestigious Kurchatov nuclear research institute (presided by the academician Velikhov) since February 2005. In 2001, Mikhail Kovalchuk was named scientific secretary to the Council for science and high technology under the presidency. Two promotions obtained thanks to the active support of the Minister of education and science, Andrey Fursenko, a long-time friend who also was a dacha neighbour of the Kovalchuks and Vladimir Putin near Saint Petersburg, at the time when the Russian president was mayor of the northern capital.

The team of Andrey Fursenko and Mikhail Kovalchuk is also found in the middle two major issues at the cross-roads of the academic and business worlds. The first concerns nanotechnologies. In mid-April, the Russian president, accompanied notably by the first vice prime minister in charge of industry, Sergey Ivanov, his chief of administration, Sergey Sobyanin, of the president of the academy of sciences, Yuri Osipov, and the head of the Rosatom federal agency, Sergey Kirienko, visited the Kurchatov institute for a seminar devoted to nanotechnologies. The result was that the Kurchatov institute was selected as prime contractor for apluriannual (2008-2015) government programme to support nanotechnologies developed by the Ministry of Andrei Fursenko. Then on April 26, Vladimir Putin announced during his annual address to the parliament the forthcoming creation of a National corporation for nanotechnologies, to be

allocated at least 180billion rubles (or 5.5 billion euros) in public funds. In parallel, the Russian government will finance the amount of 30 billion rubles for a triannual development programme for nanotechnology infrastructure that should lead to the creation of some twenty research units in Russia. A “cash shower” designed to contribute to the diversification of the Russian economy which is on Vladimir Putin’s wish-list and which should also generously irrigate accounts in Rossia bank.

At the same time, Mikhail Kovalchuk is looking to consolidate his positions in the Russian academy of sciences (RAN). Presided since 1999 by Yuri Osipov, this tentacular organisation is experiencing a period of turbulence. The reason is the wish of the Ministry of education and science to profoundly reform the organisation. It is notably a question of withdrawing the management of its finances and properties from the direction of the Academy of sciences and transferring it to its supervisory council, where state representatives are in majority.

This is a reform fashioned by Andrei Fursenko for his accomplice Mikhail Kovalchuk, foreseen to take over the head of the supervisory council of the Academy of sciences. But the academicians don’t see it in the same light and are resisting. Yuri Osipov, theoretically overthe age limit (70), has already obtained a delay of elections for the renew alot the leadership of the Academy. He has also won the adoption at the end of March of new bylaws that contradict a fusion with the private sector sought by the Ministry (it should be noted in passing that on this subject Andrei Fursenko has displayed considerable steadfastness : he had slammed the door at the Ioffe institute in Saint Petersburg where he worked in the 1980s with Yuri Kovalchuk and the head of the railways, Vladimir Yakunin, following the refusal of the director, Zhores Alferov, Nobel Prize for physics in 2000, to open it towards business. A battle probably already lost in view of the growing influence of the Kovalchuk clan in the Russian power structure. 

 [17] The Centre (csr.ru/csr-northwest) is a branch of German Gref’s and Piotr Shchedrovitskii’s Moscow think-tank; it is headed by Yuri Kovalchuk; Yuri Perel’gin is the chief coordinator of the scientific projects.

An example of this is the collaboration of the Vyborg shipbuilding plant with Kverner of Norway on converting the Sea Launch craft into a space-rocket complex for commercial launching from the equator of rockets with international satellites. Sea Start is the first successful launch of a simulation geo-stationary satellite.

Kovalchuk has recently gotten very interested in media, buying two national television channels (REN-TV and TRK-Petersgurg) and is in negotiations to buy the press group Rodionov.

The two countries are strongly attracted to each other. Norway is interested in expanding its sales market while Russia needs the latest technologies. The Norwegian side is eager to develop partnerships in the industrial spheres the country has historically been strong at. That is, shipbuilding, telecommunications, processing industries.

rocket complex

The Norwegian media group A-pressen is hoping to sell its 25% stake in Russia's biggest-selling tabloid newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, to the new majority owner, ESN group. It could realise almost £20m for the stake it acquired in 2002 for less than £5m. Media analysts believe ESN will sell the paper on to yet another buyer - a company linked to Bank Rossia, run by President Putin's friend Yury Kovalchuk - ahead of next year's presidential elections. (Via Moscow Times)

1. A mobile sea based radar, well sort of mobile, on a self propelled oil rig ?? Visions of Cheney in a Nehru jacket with a big fuzzy kitty in his lap. Will the frickin’ sharks with laser beams be next. I wonder if that is a submersible unit, since that is the likely destination of something that mobile…....

— EARL · Jun 10, 05:53 AM ·

2. I’ve been following the SBX since its Shemya days with considerable interest. (Use Google Groups on sci.military.naval to find various SBX factoids that have been deposited there over time.)

A couple of interesting questions concern the floating platform itself, apart from the radar that sits on it. The platform (called first “Moss Sirius) and now “Moss 5”) is a CS-50 model built in Vyborg, Russia for the Norwegian Moss Arctic company, which then sold it to Boeing, which was acting as an agent for MDA.

It isn’t at all clear where the money for Boeing’s purchase of Moss Sirius in late 2002 came from, and indeed there was Congressional language a few weeks before the purchase prohibiting SBX money from being used for a platform. No appropriation of monies for Moss Sirius has been located to date, so was there a violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act?

And, since the platform is of Russian provenance, might the Iran Non-Proliferation Act have been bent a bit despite the Norwegian middleman?

Finaly, since there are some hints that the radar, now called SBX-1, may be followed by SBX-2, will another Russian platform be procured for it?



Changes in Russia’s shipbuilding industry (Russia Intelligence reported on the main issues in its 46-47) have begun to take shape. Vladimir Putin said during a meeting of the

National Security Council last June 21 that he was paying priority to such reforms and energy and industry minister Viktor Khristenko has been put in charge of seeing them through.

Last October, the Russian government espoused a report on the “strategy to develop and reform naval industries up to 2030.” The document, which wasn’t made public, called for the creation of three holding companies to encompassthe government’s assets in the sector. The first will be based in the Baltic region and thecentrepieces are to be the Yantaryard in Kaliningrad and the Admiralty yard in St. Petersburg; the second hubwill be in Russia’s Far East (the Zvezdanaval repair yard at Bolshoy Kamen); lastly, a “northern shipbuilding center” will include Sevmash(which specializes in building missile-launching nuclear submarines and highseas surface ships) and the Zvyozdochka repair unit at Severodvinsk. A research center and two engineering centers areto be opened on the grounds of the Krylov Institutein St. Petersburg while repair units in the Caspian sea and Black Sea similarlyfigure in the “Strategy 2030” paper.

In a hearing before the Duma on Feb. 14, Khristenko offered some additionaldetails, particularly on the financial aspect. He said the government plans toput up EUR 3 billion in assistance to back the program to support production ofthe shipbuilding industries over the period 2009-2015. Private companies in thebranch that won’t form part of the holding companies are to be asked to take part in funding theeffort through public-private initiatives.

Khristenko spoke of such measures as an exemption of customs duties on importedequipment for which there was no equivalent in Russia; soft loans; and directinvestment in upgrading infrastructure. Another measure to be submitted to theDuma will be an amendment to shipbuilding legislation that would give Russianfirms the first crack at contracts for equipment (such as platforms) aimed atexploiting the continental shelf.

As in the aeronautics industry, the government’s priority is to use its petro-rubles in a determined bid to set the spur tocivil production. Although the “Khristenko plan” has gone done rather well in Moscow, it did gave rise to some questions. Will,for instance, the Far East hub be viable without yards in the Khabarovsk region(notably the yard at Amour, owned by theKSMKgroup run by Mikhail Kheifits)? Is there a good economic argument for building a yard at Vyborg to construct jumbo vessels to compete with South Korean yards? Morefundamentally, will an overhaul of the shipbuilding industry succeed if itdoesn’t include such major concerns as the Baltic Plant and the Northern Shipyardsthat Sergey Pugachevstill seems unwilling to sell to Rosoboronexport? 

 

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