Vardanyan - on the investigation of OCCRP, the end of the Uzbek case of MTS and the new hero of the Russian Norms - Nikita Shamgunov

On the third day after the investigation of the offshore network “Troika Dialogue”, Ruben Vardanyan took the word

Photo: Wikimedia / CC by-SA 3.0

All week, shares of a dozen European banks fall after the OCCRP investigation on offshore schemes “Three Dialogue”. Today, it was first commented by the first person by its former owner Ruben Vardanyan. It is symbolic that this week a point was set in a loud corruption scandal with bribes paid by the MTS operator in Uzbekistan: the company will pay the US authorities $ 850 million.

• The number of banks involved in the scandal with offshores is growing. There are already more than ten of them in total: the Swedish Swedbank, French Credit Agricole, Belgian KBC Group, Turkish Turkiye Garati Bankasi, as well as Danish Danske Nordea Bank, Deutsche could be involved in work Bank, Raiffeisen Bank, Abn Amro Group and others are a complete list here .
• On the third day after the publication of the investigation, the founder of the Troika Ruben Vardanyan personally decided to speak out. “Everything was mixed in the published materials: information, interpreting and fiction, torn from context - round and green [...],” he wrote on his post on Facebook. “At the same time, it is somehow forgotten at what time we lived: the“ three ”was created in the early 1990s, when the investment-banking industry did not exist, and the whole country was in a startup situation.” Without going into details, Vardanyan claims that his company then refused to live according to the "laws of the jungle" and did "everything possible to create a civilized environment in Russia with the clear rules of the game." Further steps to protect the reputation will be adopted with lawyers, writes the founder of the Troika.
• Lawyers warn what to talk about washing, without clear evidence of a criminal origin of funds that passed through the offshore companies Troika, prematurely: each case needs to be investigated separately. But, if a private institute has created a network of dozens of companies that massively provided justification for millions of transactions, the organizers may arise many questions from regulators and investigative bodies, the NEKTOROV, Saveliev & Partners, Partner of the NEKTOROV, Saveliev & Partners, told. There is little doubt that such investigations will be carried out against European banks.
• It is symbolic that this story in time coincided with another significant event: the end of the Uzbek epic of the mobile operator MTS. The company entered into a settlement agreement with the US Ministry of Justice and SEC and pay $ 850 million. In exchange, the American authorities will abandon claims in connection with the corruption entry of the operator to the Uzbek market back in 2004. In the same week, a participant in this scandal-the daughter of the late President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov still went to the colony .

What am I to me?

Vardanyan calls not to evaluate the activities of the “troika” “outside the historical, economic and business context, measuring it with the standards of today.” The events of this week prove that the statute of limitations in the assessments of this context is not “laws of the jungle”, according to which not only Russian business worked, will be studied many years after the rules of the game began to change.

Bell Club

"Russian norms!"

New Hero of the project - Nikita Shamgunov

Shamgunov is one of the best Russian programmers. In 2001, he, along with the team, received bronze at the World Sports Programming Championship, and after 10 years he created an accelerator of the MemSQL database, which has been used by Morgan Stanley, Uber, Samsung, Cisco and Sony. Memsql invested Yuri Milner and Max Levchin, and its cost is estimated at $ 400 million. In an interview with Lisa Ossetian Shamgunov, he told what it was - to refuse $ 2 million and build a company from scratch, why there are fewer women than men in programming, and what he talked about with Bill Gates.

MONEY

For less money

Women in Russia are ready to earn fewer men, and even reduce the bar, write “Vedomosti” with reference to the research of head -hoods. In 2017, in the resume, they indicated the desired salaries on average 25% lower than men in similar positions, and last year the gap increased to 27%, HeadHunter calculated. The gaps in the regions, and among professions, they grow faster among accountants and financiers, sales specialists, medical staff and pharmacists, administrators, travel agencies, hotels and restaurants. The top positions are still worse: here the gap in expectations is 36%.

Zuckerberg will make messengers the main on Facebook

The new software article by the founder of Facebook is unusual in that it will upset both Roskomnadzor and Telegram always conflicting with it. Mark Zuckerberg admitted that most of his audience is needed rather not a market square (classic social network), but a room for a private conversation (secure messenger). This is the main direction of development of the largest social network of the world for the coming years. Already familiar messages of messaging - Messenger and WhatsApp - promise to become so well encrypted that personal correspondence will not be able to read the social network itself. As for the data security - Facebook is ready to generally store them forever and sacrifice the presence in countries that require storage of data on their territory. All this should help avoid scandals likeCambridge Analytica , who instantly deprived Facebook $ 80 billion of capitalization. However, something kept silent about something: what to do with increasingly sophisticated targeted advertising and collecting data on user behavior for commercial purposes?

PRACTICE

Medicine for depression

The Office for the Quality of Food and Medicines of the United States (FDA) certified the new medicine for depression. The new drug Escamine was developed by the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson - it produces it in the form of a nasal spray. The medicine is already called the first serious breakthrough in the treatment of this disease after the appearance of a prose on the market in 1987. The main risk of using the drug is abuse of it as a drug. We wrote about how the new medicine for depression works here .

10 breakthrough technologies from Bill Gates

This year, the external curator first helped to take the top ten most breakthrough technologies Mit Technology Review - Bill Gates was invited to this role. It is not surprising that most of the list eventually formed technologies in the field of medicine - the hours and bracelets that control the work of the heart and bracelets used in the fight against cancer methods of gene therapy, which has become replaced by the medical probe, and the test, which allows pregnancy to prevent the possibility of premature birth. Also in the top - dexterous robots, safe nuclear reactors, artificial meat, work without water toilets and CO2 catching.

Fun

Adventures Vova in Venezuela

“Maduro’s wallet” was not a wallet, but by the fiction of the pranker Vovan (aka Vladimir Kuznetsov). Vovan himself wrote about this on his Facebook page. In his legend that Nicholas Maduro allegedly stores money in the Russian Foundation Nurlan Baydilda, he willingly believed both the Venezuelan opposition and the special envoy to Venezuela Elliot Abrams, says pranker. The fact that Maduro allegedly withdrew millions of dollars from the country to the accounts of the Nurlan Baildilda Foundation, which belongs to Russian Nurlan Baydilda, Bloomberg reported last week. The Bell, even before the revelations of Vovan, figured out who Nurlan Baydilda is. It turned out that this is a typical graduate of the scandalously known “business milky” and he has no fund.

Irina Malkova