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An adoption story leads the news from Russia this week. Russia’s Supreme Court overturned three guilty verdicts in a seven-year case about the adoption of Russian children by foreigners and ordered a retrial. Last September, a court in Volgograd convicted a former Russian citizen and the former director and doctor of the Kirov orphanage of bribery and forging documents. All were given suspended sentences, however.
In technology, Russian tech companies have shown up in force at Germany’s big tech trade fair, CeBit. According to the Russian business daily Kommersant, Russia has sent 150 exhibitors to CeBit, making it the fourth biggest exhibitor. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has already toured the Russian displays and Kommersant says some business deals have been struck by the exhibiting companies.
In business, MosNews says Chevron is investing $1 billion in an oil subsidiary of Russian energy company Gazprom. The Associated Press reported Thursday that Aeroflot will buy 22 A350 widebody aircraft from Airbus and another 10 to 15 smaller planes. The sale would be a boost for the European aircraft maker, which has lost ground to Boeing and has been suffering delays in the introduction of its A380 superjumbo jet. And Interfax reported that Russia imported 1.049 million foreign cars in 2006, up nearly 17% from 2005. Maybe easing the smog that those cars will produce somewhat: A report that Russia will soon begin producing ethanol.
In legal affairs, the Associated Press is reporting that the husband of a former curator at the Hermitage museum has been convicted in last year’s theft of more than 200 works of art from the famed St. Petersburg institution. Nikolai Zavadsky was also ordered to pay $283,000 in damages to the museum. Also, the Russian Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling to keep the director of a Russian rocket and space technology export company in jail until he can be tried on charges of spying for China.
And there has been another snag in the retrial of three men accused of killing my former Forbes co-worker Paul Klebnikov nearly three years ago. One of three defendants has disappeared, so a Moscow court ruled Wednesday that the trial would be postponed. The missing defendant had been free since he was acquitted by a Moscow jury last year, but Russia’s Supreme Court later overturned that decision.
And several papers are reporting that Russia’s richest man and his wife have divorced. Roman Abramovich was recently ranked as the richest of Russia’s 53 billionaires by Forbes. According to Vedomosti, Irina Abramovich, his wife of 16 years, will get less than two percent of his $18.7 billion fortune. That,according to MSNBC.com, would be far less than she is entitled to under Russian law, which splits marital property 50-50.
