Новости из прошлого на английском языке. Выпуск №3

Новости для сборника подобраны из газеты «The Moscow Times» 2010 год

Daughter of Kiev Mayor Reports $5.5 Million Worth of Jewelry Stolen From Her Purse in Paris1

PARIS – The daughter of Kiev’s mayor told police that she was robbed of 4 million euros ($5.5 million) worth of jewelry as she traveled by car from Charles de Gaulle airport to the French capital, Paris police said Tuesday.

A spokesman for her wealthy father, however, immediately denied the report, which could be embarrassing considering that his daughter heads a charity organization funded by his own city government and many Ukrainians are struggling amid a widespread recession. A Paris police official said Kristina Chernovetska reported that a man broke into her luxury car Monday as it stopped on a highway north of Paris, then stole her purse. Chernovetska reported the incident to authorities and said the purse contained valuable rings and earrings, the official said. The official was not authorized to be named according to police policy and gave no further description of the jewelry. But a spokesman for Kiev Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky denied that there was a robbery. «This is somebody’s bad joke. We completely deny these reports about a robbery. There was no robbery,» spokeswoman Marta Hrymska said.

Chernovetsky was one of the first banking magnates in Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union and sold his Pravex Bank for 493 million euros to Italy’s lntesa Sanpaolo in June 2008. His term as mayor since 2006 has been marked by persistent corruption scandals, and he has often boasted of his daughter’s charity work to bolster his scarred public image. This would be the first public flap involving Kristina.

French police said they contacted the Ukrainian Embassy about the incident, but the embassy would not comment on it Tuesday. Hrymska insisted that Chernovetska was in Kiev on Tuesday, but her whereabouts remained unknown. A receptionist at the luxury George V hotel just off the Champs-Elysees confirmed that a «Christina» Chernovetska was registered, but it was not clear whether that was the same person. At the George V, the least expensive room is 750 euros ($1,025) a night. Luxury limousines lined up in front of the hotel for guests in furs and designer sunglasses, while diners inside lunched beneath crystal chandeliers. Among goods on sale at the George V are 100,000 euro ($136,700) pearl necklaces.

Chernovetska, 30, has degrees in law and economics, and she heads the charity organization Luchshy Dom, or «Best House,» a home for poor older people funded by the city of Kiev. She has also previously worked on her father’s political campaigns. The report of the jewel theft led to a political backlash Tuesday, as Volodymyr Bondarenko of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, her group of lawmakers in the parliament, poked fun at both daughter and father. «Chernovetsky needs to immediately call up his favorite grandmas and grandpas so that they could sacrifice part of their pensions to buy Kristina back her jewels,» Bondarenko said in a statement.

Russia Sends Aid to Quake-Hit Chile2

President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered the Emergency Situations Ministry to send two cargo planes loaded with humanitarian aid to Chile after the South American country was rocked by a powerful earthquake last week, a Kremlin spokesman told reporters Tuesday.

The first cargo plane carrying tents, blankets and electric power generators will arrive in Chile on Wednesday, and a second plane with other humanitarian aid will follow a day later, a ministry spokeswoman told The Moscow Times on Tuesday. «No Russian rescue teams will be sent there, only the aid,» she said.

More than 700 people have died and about 2 million have been displaced after the magnitude-8.8 earthquake hit the Chilean coast last Friday. No Russian citizens were killed or wounded during the quake, but the Russian Embassy in the capital of Santiago was slightly damaged. Russian rescue teams recently took part in a relief operation in Haiti after the Caribbean Island was devastated by a powerful earthquake in January.

Investigator Released in $15M Bribe Case3

A senior federal investigator has returned to work while under indictment for purportedly extorting $15 million from a local businessman, Interfax reported Thursday.

Andrei Grivtsov, in charge of high-priority cases with the Investigative Committee, was detained Jan. 15 on suspicion of soliciting the enormous bribe from Vladimir Palikhata, head of Rosenergomash, a leading electrical engineering manufacturer. A Moscow court, however, released Grivtsov from pretrial detention late Wednesday, Interfax reported.

Grivtsov’s lawyer, Alexander Zabeida, told Interfax on Thursday that his client had returned to work because he had not been «fired or suspended from his post» while under investigation. Grivtsov’s suspected accomplice, Sergei Karimov, was detained Jan. 14 while collecting $8 million as a first installment of the bribe at Interkommertsbank, investigators say.

Investigators accuse Grivtsov of demanding the bribe in exchange for not opening a criminal case against Palikhata. Moscow’s Basmanny District Court had sanctioned the arrest of the two men, but the Moscow City Court ruled Wednesday that investigators had insufficient evidence to hold the two men in custody, Kommersant reported Thursday. The Basmanny court must now issue a new ruling on whether to place the two suspects under arrest, the report said. Investigators earlier said Grivtsov conspired with several former and current law enforcement officials who have not been arrested.

Baritone Singer Goes Skydiving to Conquer Fear4

NEW YORK – Star baritone Dmitry Hvorostovsky is fearless when reaching for musical heights. But the Russian singer says he’s always been scared of physical heights, even on stage sets. So he decided to tackle his fear by reaching sky-high – literally.

The 47-year-old, silver-haired opera singer parachuted from a plane over Florida in December. The proof is a photograph on his new Facebook page that was taken as he dropped at more than 160 kilometers an hour. «I had to do that, because it’s another way to challenge yourself, and life is all about challenges,» he said in a recent interview. «I’m so used to adrenaline, in everything I do.» He acknowledges that «in some crazy productions, when I’m up very high, I’m trembling.» On Saturday, the Metropolitan Opera star will take on another sort of adventure: a show at New York’s Radio City Music Hall featuring the pop songs of Russian composer Igor Krutoi. Next month, Hvorostovsky is to sing a Carnegie Hall recital with American soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, after appearing with her in late March at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall, the Place des Arts in Montreal and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

And he wants to parachute again sometime soon. «When I jumped out of the plane, it was the most glorious moment in my life,» he said. «You really feel on top of the world.»

Consumers to Pay Commission on Utilities5

Sberbank Moscow has announced that the commission for utility services, which will be collected from May 1, will be 2 percent. Previously it was assumed that it would be 3 percent. Maxim Poletayev, the chairman of Sberbank Moscow, announced that the commission will be levied only according to official documents.

The date it will take effect remains the same – May 1. Previously, the service was free for the majority of Muscovites because the Moscow government paid costs for the bank to receive payments for housing and communal services, but this year the responsibility for payment is being passed on to consumers. As a result, Sberbank expects that customers will increasingly use remote channels for payment such as the Internet or ATMs, where commission will be 0.5 percent.

Residents are already searching for ways to save on payments. In some Sberbank branches, pensioners said they had come to pay quickly before the commission took effect. Many had gone to post offices for the same purpose, since they take payments without any commission.

Hundreds of WWII Artillery Shells Found6

Hundreds of rusty World War II-era artillery shells were found beneath a road in northwestern Moscow, prompting the evacuation of dozens of people. Sappers removed 916 field artillery shells of various calibers after workers expanding Prospekt Marshala Zhukova stumbled upon the cache. Residents of two nearby apartment buildings were evacuated immediately, and the road was closed to traffic. At least 28 of the shells were armed, said Igor Chemego, chief of the district office of the Emergency Situations Ministry for northwestern Moscow. But he downplayed the danger they posed.

The shells were loaded into trucks for safe disposal, said Major Serge’ Novikov of the sappers unit. The shells were destroyed at a Moscow airfield late Wednesday, Interfax reported. Such finds are relatively common in Russia, which experienced some of World War II’s fiercest battles. Some residents at the scene claimed that the cache which featured 76mm and 152mm shells – was part of a wider network of ordnance depots located in the area since the 1930s. Zufiar Nurimanov, 72, who has been living in the area for nearly 40 years, said residents routinely found shells in the ground and some boys were killed while playing with them during Soviet times. «Many children played with the ammunition, like throwing shells into the fire, and were killed,» he said.

Abramovich Wins Libel Suit7

LONDON – Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich has won a public apology and libel damages from an Italian publisher over allegations that he is a compulsive gambler. Gruppo Editoriale L’Espresso agreed to pay «substantial damages» for a story in the paper La Repubblica in May titled, «A black year for Abramovich as he loses a yacht at poker,» Abramovich’s lawyer John Kelly said Thursday. Kelly said Abramovich would donate the money to charity.

Lawyer Confesses to $17M Robbery Hoax8

A lawyer arrested for allegedly stealing $17 million in cash has confessed and disclosed the location of the money, RIA-Novosti reported Thursday. Yevgeny Skoblikov, 33, was arrested in October soon after he told police that about $6 million and 7 million euros ($10.5 million) in cash were stolen from his rented Moscow apartment. He said the money, stored in several suitcases, belonged to his clients from Novosibirsk, who had received it as inheritance. The investigators believe that he faked the robbery and hid the cash. Skoblikov disclosed the information after several months in custody during a lie-detector test, the report said. «The missing sum was discovered in the place that he mentioned,» a law enforcement source told RIA-Novosti. The cash was found hidden in the Moscow region town of Lobnya packed in three big bags weighing 70 kilograms in total, Moscow police spokesman Viktor Biryukov told Gazeta.ru.