'Norilsk Nickel: A Tale of Unbridled Capitalism, Russian Styleby Anton Foek, Special to CorpWatch October 9th, 2008Cartoon by Khalil Bendib
The launch of Russia’s stock markets in the early 90s and the privatization of state assets was one of the best things that happened in the short career of Dmitri Mededov, a Russian attorney. Opening up Russia’s stock market and changing the economic system included lucrative loans against stock. These loans were designed to benefit the Russian government of President Boris Yeltsin, which could not finance its huge budget deficits by just printing more money – a stopgap measure that would just spark inflation and generate other serious financial problems. “So we thought of a plan to have commercial banks loan all the money they wanted to the government in exchange for bonds and equities, using oil and gas or mining companies as collateral. Of course they’d lose that if they did not pay the loans back in time,” said Mededov, referring to a master plan he brought back from his studies at Yale in the United States. The biggest transfer was the Norilsk Nickel company. For US$170 million, Russia’s Oneksimbank received 38 percent of the world’s largest nickel and platinum company. Ten years ago its annual net profit was $1.2 billion, and today, as a high-profile global corporation, Norilsk earns that amount per financial quarter. Its worth as of July 2008 is valued at $53 billion. Much of that increase is linked to rising nickel prices sparked by the continuing record-high demand by steel producers, and by the trade activity of global investment funds. When Mededov started out, the price of nickel was not even $1,000 per ton; it now tops $50,000. “The $170 million Oneksimbank paid for the company is pure theft and similar acquisitions of oil and gas or mining and minerals corporations should be investigated,” says Stanislav Russki, a young Communist and close advisor to the leaders of a movement hoping to steer Russia back to a more socialized industry. Russki placed a dramatic ad in the Moscow newspapers requesting that Norilsk’s vast profits and other monies “earned”' by the new Russians, be returned to the Russian people who have given their “blood, sweat and tears to develop this greatest nation on Earth.” “We have democratic and basic rights. No one will take them away from us,” the ad says. Russki has seen the effect of unbridled corporate activity firsthand in his native Krasnoyarsk. In the Stalinist era, some 350,000 forced workers helped build the town of Nikel, near the border with Norway. In 1932 Stalin established other mining projects: gold from Jakutsk; coal from Vorkuta; fluorspar from Anderma; and nickel, copper, palladium and platinum from Norilsk. Before Norilsk Nickel dominated the area, the arctic area was pristine. Today, winter satellite images reveal the city as a black blister on a white sheet of snow. A grey veil covers the earth well into Norway. Nikel itself is treeless. Layers of dust cover the houses and electricity poles. There are few cars. Most transportation is old dusty buses. Executives Surge In 1993 when Norlisk became a privately-owned stock-based company, Russian entrepreneur Vladimir Potanin arranged to acquire 38 percent of the shares and so became one of the most powerful corporate executives in Russia. Norlisk now owns two production sites, in the Tajmyr-peninsula – around the towns of Norilsk, Talnach, Kajerkan and Doedinka and in the Kola peninsula – around Montsjegorsk, Zapoljarny and Nikel. Potanin’s fortunes have risen along with the company’s. A 2000 PBS documentary on the new Russian capitalists called him a “true capitalist tycoon and one of Russia’s new oligarchs.” Olga Belaynesh, the conservator of the local museum called Potanin “one of the great Russians of all times,” and pledged to soon put “a complete biography on the Internet of the man who is going to save the region.”
Lees verder: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15215
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