Corporate Governance

………….In 2008 the former prime minister was a guest speaker at a conference held in the Black Sea resort of Yalta and organised by Mr Pinchuk, at which Mr Blair pushed Ukraine’s case to join the European Union, the presidency of which Mr Blair was then widely tipped to take.
Mr Pinchuk has been a keen advocate of EU membership, setting up a firm to promote Ukraine’s EU credentials. Its directors included, until 2010, Stephen Byers, Mr Blair’s former trade secretary.
Shortly after leaving Downing Street, Mr Blair was introduced to Mr Pinchuk through Bill Clinton and senior staff at the Clinton Foundation.
The former president’s foundation was given $1.1 million (£700,000), by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in 2011.
What is certainly known is that Mr Pinchuk enjoys making new friends, and makes an intriguing one for Mr Blair.
Other acquaintances Mr Blair has nurtured include Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch, and Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda.
Like many of those who became rich as the Soviet Union collapsed, Mr Pinchuk has been targeted by gangsters and attracted controversy.
Born in Kiev in 1960, he grew up in Dnipropetrovsk and studied at the city’s metallurgical institute before beginning a career as a research engineer in pipe production.
He founded Interpipe in 1990 just as the Soviet Union was breaking up. In 1996, he was kidnapped by gangsters and freed after several weeks when a ransom was paid.
He was already married when he met his second wife, Elena Franchuk, a year later in 1997. She was also married but each left their spouses and wed in 2002. Mrs Franchuk, as she then was, is the daughter of Leonid Kuchma, who was Ukraine’s president from 1994 to 2005.
It was during this period that Mr Pinchuk, who was already successful, turned himself into a billionaire.
His rise did not come without some controversy. Interpipe bought a 50 per cent stake in the Nikopol steel plant in 2003 for $80 million.
The sale was contested two years later following a change in government. Viktor Yushchenko, the president who came to power after the Orange Revolution, said: “Despite all of Pinchuk’s sniffles and groans, the factory will be returned to the state.” In fact, Mr Yushchenko was still in power when the privatisation was confirmed as lawful………....

Stealth Players: Who's on Putin's American Payroll?

What's not included in the NBC News article by Eamon Javers, is that the British have been working to separate Russia from the EU as is evidenced by the fact that GPlus Europe, which is a subsidy of Ketchum specializes in recruiting former EU officials and well known journalists. For example, Gregor Kreuzhber, who leads GPlus Europe leads the company's pro-Gazprom operations.

Germany strongly disagrees with Britain attempting to isolate Russia and its continued attempts through IMF and the World Trade Organization (WTO) lackeys like Catherine Ashton to push Russia out of the EU and pull Ukraine into the EU at the same time.

Germany is distancing itself from the U.S. Peter Witt is a retired German deputy ambassador to the EU before he was hired by GPlus. The U.S. is in an economic war with Russia.

This NBC News article is attempting to further distance Russia and isolate Vladimir Putin. All countries in some way spend money on U.S. and British public relations and law firms to represent them in the U.S. and in Britain. Russia is no different. Take a look at the PR firms in Europe and in the U.S. Israel has hired. It is astounding.

Thanks for forwarding.

*BREAKING* Leak : Estonian FM says Maidan snipers were not Yanukovich's

MOSCOW – Russia’s TNK-BP said Thursday that it is in talks with its 50 percent shareholder, BP Plc, on the troubled giant’s Venezuelan assets, valued at some $1 billion.

The smaller company supports BP’s plans to restructure its assets in Venezuela and is actively considering the possibility of participating in these projects, a TNK executive told Russian state-owned news agency RIA-Novosti.

“TNK-BP views this as a possibility to increase its international assets portfolio and expand its presence in Venezuela,” the spokesman said.

The executive recalled that TNK-BP already participates in oil exploration and production in Venezuela as a member of a consortium that partners with state oil company PDVSA.

“We think the realignment of BP’s assets is in the interest of both companies and also will contribute to the efficient development of Venezuela’s oil sector,” the TNK-BP representative said.

Western media report that BP, which plans to sell assets valued at $30 billion to cover the costs of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is in talks with its Russian joint venture on the possible transfer of its Venezuelan oil assets.

Those assets include BP’s minority stakes in two oil exploration and production projects being carried out jointly with PDVSA, although a BP representative characterized that information as “rumor and speculation.”

BP and Russian consortium AAR, whose largest shareholder is billionaire Mikhail Fridman, each own 50 percent stakes in TNK-BP, which was founded in 2003.

TNK-BP has production assets in western and eastern Siberia and the Volga-Ural Mountains region. The company also manages five refineries in Russia and the Ukraine and a network of 1,400 service stations that operate under both brands, TNK and BP.

TNK-BP, which also owns 50 percent of Russian oil and gas company Slavneft, accounts for 16 percent of Russian crude production.

The company’s proven reserves, calculated according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules, amounted to nearly 8.59 billion barrels on Dec. 31 of last year.