Ukraine's request to the European Commission for an additional loan of 2 billion euros has no relation to the trilateral gas talks taking place in Brussels, said EC spokesman Simon O'Connor. "To clear up any misunderstandings: Ukraine's request for additional financial assistance is in no way connected to today's gas negotiations," he said. "The European Commission has received a request from the Ukrainian authorities for an additional loan of 2 billion euros.

October 21, 2014, 03:31 / Business The President of Total died in a plane crash at Vnukovo-3 The plane carrying Christophe de Margerie collided with a snow blower and burned out; the driver of the car was drunk, reported the Investigative Committee Lyudmila Klimentyeva Christophe de Margerie / Fabrice Dimier / Bloomberg A private Falcon jet, carrying the president of the French oil giant Total, Christophe de Margerie, took off from Moscow to Paris on the night of October 20-21 at 23.57 Moscow

Co-chairman of the Alliance of Greens and Social Democrats party, former State Duma deputy Gennady Gudkov has left the party, according to a statement released on Tuesday by the press service of the Alliance of Greens. "On October 21, the Central Council of the Alliance of Greens and Social Democrats party granted Gennady Gudkov's application, dismissing him from the position of co-chairman, and expelling him from the party," the press release said.

In case of a shortage of resources, UniCredit Bank may attract funds from the parent structure, stated the bank's chairman of the board, Mikhail Alekseev. "We do not depend on external funding, but if we suddenly have some great prospects for growth of the loan portfolio, we can always receive funds from our shareholder - the Unicredit group," he said.

October 21, 2014, 13:02 / Business Gazprom will increase its investment program and may get a listing in Hong Kong Sergey Smirnov The Gazprom Board of Directors approved an increase in the investment program for 2014 to 1.26 trillion rubles, which is 220 billion rubles. more than the investment program approved in December 2013, the company reports. The volume of capital investments will amount to 816.5 billion rubles.

In connection with the Falcon crash, Total President Christophe de Margerie has opened a criminal case under Part 3 of Art. 263 of the Criminal Code of Russia ( violation of safety rules for the operation of an aircraft, resulting in the death of two or more persons through negligence), TASS reports. press service, told reporters airport , head of the Vnukovo Black boxes were seized from the crash site, Elena Krylova . Explanatory notes are taken from airport employees.

The new threshold for duty-free online trade will be less than 1,000 euros, but more than 150 euros, the Ministry of Economic Development told journalists. "It will certainly not be 1,000, but it will not be 150 euros either," the Interfax source said. "We hope that the decision will be made this week," the source added. As Vedomosti learned earlier, a meeting was held on Friday by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov to discuss the issue of duties on online trade.

Andrey Makhonin / Vedomosti Today, the State Duma will consider amendments to the Tax Code in the second reading, which were prepared by the Chairman of the Budget and Taxes Committee Andrei Makarov and deputy Sergei Chizhov. In particular, the project introduces new criteria for calculating the tax base for commercial and office real estate.

Alexander Lukashenko "There should be no slackers in the country. We must force these people to work and stop giving away free benefits to those who do not work." The President of Belarus instructed the government to restrict access to free social services for unemployed able-bodied citizens.

According to the draft Moscow budget for 2015-2017, the city will earn almost 17 billion rubles from paid parking, M24.ru reports, citing Deputy Speaker of the Moscow City Duma Andrei Metelsky. This will amount to an average of 0.4% of all Moscow budget revenues. In 2015, budget revenues from the provision of parking spaces on a paid basis will amount to almost 4.88 billion rubles, in 2016 - more than 6 billion rubles, in 2017 - 5.97 billion rubles.

Denis Abramov / Vedomosti Last fall, Norilsk Nickel adopted a new development strategy and decided to focus on “first-class assets” that bring the company more than $1 billion in revenue per year and whose EBITDA profitability is higher than 40%. The company decided to get rid of all other assets and return part of the proceeds from their sale to shareholders. The amount of the special dividend was set at $1 billion, and it was originally planned to be paid based on the results of 2015.

Alexander Kryazhev / RIA Novosti The Moscow government has put up for auction 100% of the shares of OAO Koptevsky Market and 100% of the shares of OAO Severny Market in the north of Moscow. This was reported in a statement by the Moscow Department for Competition Policy. The starting price of the shares of the Koptevsky market is 202.24 million rubles, the Northern market - 171 million rubles. The auction will take place on December 23, 2014.

Russia will expand the list of automakers admitted to government procurement by adding companies that have begun working in industrial assembly mode in recent years. The government decree of July 14 limited the circle of companies admitted to participate in procurement for state and municipal needs to those manufacturers that were included in the list of those carrying out industrial assembly back in 2010.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved changes to the roadmap "Improving the Quality of the Regulatory Environment for Business", the Cabinet website reports. In particular, the deadlines for implementing individual measures of the roadmap will be reduced, including the deadlines for submitting draft regulatory legal acts to the government. The roadmap is supplemented by a new clause providing for amendments to the legislation on issues of personnel document flow in electronic form.

At a meeting on Tuesday, the State Duma adopted in the first reading the government bill on tax maneuver in the oil industry. The essence of the maneuver is a gradual reduction of export customs duties on oil and oil products over 3 years, the explanatory note to the document says.