Banking and Stock Exchange, Finance, Economics (Russia)
August 25, 2006 Friday
There are to-date about 20 money transfer systems in Russia. New
systems start to oust recognized leaders of the market
Reference: Tatiana Yemelyanova, “Transfer Difficulties”, Nezavisimaya
Gazeta, August 14, 2006, p.5.
“Some time ago, money transfer systems were associated with
international brands, such as Western Union, Money Gram and Travelax.
However, money transfer systems from the CIS countries, including
Anelik (Armenia) and PrivatMoney (Ukraine), have lately started to
press the market leaders,” says Andrei Pogoryansky, the deputy board
chairman of OAO Gorodskoy Klientsky Bank. At present, this bank
offers two types of money transfers – through Western Union and
Anelik and both of them are in demand. MDM-Bank offers the same two
systems to its customers. “Every system has its customers. Western
Union has the largest network and positions itself as the fastest
system. However, Western Union’s commission fees are higher compared
with other operators. Anelik charges low commission fees for a money
transfer within 24 hours,” says Ivan Artamonov, senior vice president
of MDM-Bank.
CONTACT, a Russian international system of money transfers and
payments, is gaining popularity. “The system has over 27 thousand
service points in 79 countries of the world. Over 11 thousand persons
make use of its services daily. In 2005, the amount of money
transfers through the CONTACT system came to more than $900 million.
>>From March 2005 till March 2006, the amount of transactions exceeded
$1 billion,” said Sergey Bludov, the deputy board chairman of
RusSlavBank.
The Post of Russia made up its mind to intensify competition on the
money transfer market and launched the Cyber-Money project. “About 40
thousand post offices all over Russia have taken part in the project.
However, the term of delivery of money to a remittee is still rather
long – about 48 hours,” Andrei Pogoryansky says.
Experts make mention of one more serious competitor – Sberbank. This
year, Sberbank has launched a new system of express money transfers
Blitz based on the application of modern bank technologies and
high-speed communication channels. Sberbank’s press service informed
that over 4.5 thousand branches of the bank had already been
connected to the system and their number would increase to 5 thousand
by the end of this quarter. The service is in demand, according to
Sberbank: transfers to the amount of over 7 billion rubles have been
made within six months of operation of the system.
The Fast Post system is the most well-known Russian system. It takes
a few minutes to transfer money inside Russia and to the CIS
countries with the help of this system. Migom and Unistream are aimed
at the same regions.

Local man sentenced in Armenia
25-year-old gets 10 years for murder
BY EUGENE TONG, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Daily News, CA
Aug. 26, 2006
A Glendale man who fled to Armenia in 2005 when he came under suspicion
of strangling his girlfriend was convicted by an Armenian court of
her murder, authorities said Friday.
Artur Khanzadyan, 25, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison
by an Armenian judge in the death of Odet Tsaturyan, of Glendale.
He was arrested in Armenia last November, about two months after
the body of the 23-year-old woman was found in the trunk of his car,
which was abandoned in Azusa.
The verdict was delivered Friday by Judge Mushegh Harutunyan at a
court in Vanadzor, a city about a three-hour drive from the capital
of Yerevan and Khanzadyan’s hometown, Glendale police spokesman John
Balian said.
“Based on the police report and the evidence provided, Khanzadyan was
found guilty of murder with the act of jealousy,” he said Friday,
citing a report from two Glendale police detectives who assisted
prosecutors and attended the trial.
“We’ll be monitoring to make sure he does the full 10 years.”
Khanzadyan has about two months to appeal the decision. The Tsaturyans
did not immediately return calls for comment Friday.
Glendale police and U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, had hoped
to try Khanzadyan in the United States, where he could have been
sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for murder, compared to the
maximum 12 years in Armenia.
But the two nations do not have a formal extradition treaty, and the
request was denied despite previous cooperation from authorities.
“Under the circumstances that we were faced with – as far as the
challenge of bringing him back over here – this was the best we could
do to bring him to justice,” Balian said.
“There will always be a difference between the two systems. But I
think it’s important the criminal element out there know that if we
have to go to Armenia to prosecute you, we will.”
Schiff, who sent two letters over the past year to Armenian President
Robert Kocharian requesting Khanzadyan’s return, hoped for better
cooperation from authorities next time a fugitive seeks refuge there.
“We are grateful that we apprehended him and that he’s not living
free in Armenia,” he said in an interview Friday. “But we felt that
justice would’ve been best served if he had been prosecuted in the
United States.”
Judge Harutunyan reached the verdict after two days of hearings that
began Tuesday. Reports prepared by Glendale police and the county
coroner’s office were submitted as evidence, and three witnesses –
Odet’s father Shagen Tsaturyan and two of Khanzadyan’s relatives –
testified, Balian said.
As part of a local custom, Tsaturyan confronted the accused about
his daughter’s death.
“At one point, Khanzadyan made disparaging remarks that his daughter
was not the angel he thought she was,” Balian said. “The judge
jumped in and said, `Be careful how you speak in my courtroom. Don’t
disrespect the victim’s father.”‘
Khanzadyan’s attorney Karine Gasparyan said her client did not
intentionally kill Odet Tsaturyan – she had stopped breathing, and
the neck injuries that pointed to strangling came from his attempt
to revive her by CPR.
She also said Khanzadyan suffered a childhood head injury that
prevented rational thinking.
“Khanzadyan apologized to anyone who was affected by the incident,
but he denied he intentionally killed Odet Tsaturyan,” Balian said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Who needed the noise about Andrzej Kasprzyk’s personality
ArmRadio.am
26.08.2006 16:00
“I’m acting in the frames of the OSCE mandate, according to the
agreement of the parties. I can leave only in case the sides officially
speak against my candidacy. However, up to now none of the statements
has made a similar statement,” Personal Representative of the OSCE
Chairman-in-Office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk told TURAN agency,
commenting on a number of critical reports in the mass media. The
Ambassador said also that he doesn’t understand the reason of the noise
about his personality in the Azeri media. Kasprzyk noted also that he
is currently in Europe and intends to return to Baku early September.
It should be noted that official Baku was dissatisfied with Kasprzyk’s
report on the results of the monitoring of the fires at the contact
line between the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh,
particularly with the opinion of the Ambassador, according to which it
is impossible to reveal the reasons of the inflammations. After this
Azeri media started convincing Andrzej Kasprzyk of his pro-Armenian
position.

First funerals held for Russian victims of plane crash
AP Worldstream; Aug 26, 2006
The first funerals were held Saturday for Russians killed when a
passenger jet crashed in Ukraine after encountering rough weather,
killing all 170 people registered aboard.
Meanwhile, the identified remains of 36 victims were being returned
to St. Petersburg, Russia, where most of the passengers lived, aboard
a cargo plane flight from Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Russian Emergency
Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said. More than 30
bodies had been returned to St. Petersburg for burial a day earlier.
In the Russian Black Sea resort city of Anapa, where the Pulkovo
Airlines Tu-154 had taken off on a flight to St. Petersburg,
friends and loved ones buried Natalya Kuznetsova. State-run Rossiya
television said the St. Petersburg resident had grown up in Anapa
and was vacationing with her husband and son before flying back home
alone to return to work while they continued their holiday.
At a village in the Krasnodar region, where Anapa is located,
a funeral was held for a 19-year-old man who had been returning to
St. Petersburg to start his second year at a university, the ITAR-Tass
news agency reported.
Dozens of relatives who had traveled to Ukraine to identify their
loved ones were returning to Russia on Saturday, authorities said.
The plane slammed into a field north of Donetsk after its crew sent
distress signals as a storm raged in the area.
Ukraine’s Emergency Ministry said that while emergency workers were
loading fragments of the shattered plane to clear the site, they
found two bodies including one of a small child.
The crash was the third major air disaster involving a Russian airline
or airport this year. An Airbus A-310 of the Russian airline S7
skidded off a runway and burst into flames on July 9 in the Siberian
city of Irkutsk, killing 124 people, and an A-320 of the Armenian
airline Armenia crashed into the Black Sea while trying to land in
the Russian resort city of Sochi in rough weather in May, killing
all 113 people aboard.

OSCE official denies critical Azeri media reports
Turan news agency
26 Aug 06
Baku, 26 August: “I work under an OSCE mandate and agreement reached
between the sides [Azerbaijan and Armenia]. I am not going to resign.
I may only resign if the sides officially say they do not want me
in this post. None of the sides has made a statement to this effect
so far,” Andrzej Kasprzyk, the personal representative of the OSCE
chairman-in-office, has said in a telephone interview with Turan. He
was commenting on recent Azerbaijani media reports critical of him.
Kasprzyk said he does not understand the causes of the scandal
surrounding him in the Azerbaijani media. He said he does not know
who is behind the scandal either.
Kasprzyk dismissed the critical media reports that he is engaged in
carpet trade.
“I cannot file a libel suit as I am a diplomat,” the envoy said. He
expressed regret that the Azerbaijani media quote unreliable sources.
Kasprzyk said he is now in Europe and plans to come to Baku in early
September.
Kasprzyk’s report on monitoring of fires along the Armenian-Azerbaijani
front line angered official Baku. First, representatives of the
Foreign Ministry and the Presidential Executive Staff, and then the
state-controlled media accused Kasprzyk of failing to see “the obvious
truth”, taking a pro-Armenian stance, etc.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azeri army sees 36 fatalities in eight months – paper
Zerkalo, Baku
26 Aug 06
Excerpt from report by the “Doktrina” Centre for Journalists’ Military
Studies in Azerbaijani newspaper Zerkalo on 26 August headlined
“Peacetime fatalities in the army” and subheaded “185 soldiers died
in 44 months”; subheadings as published:
There were over 36 fatalities in the Azerbaijani army in the first
eight months of 2006. The figure shows that the number of fatalities
increased in comparison with the same period last year when the army
lost 29 soldiers.
In total, at least 39 servicemen died in 2005 and 35 in 2004.
Thus, there is an upward trend in the death rate in the armed forces.
In the past four years, the most unfavourable was 2003 when 75
servicemen died for various reasons.
Fatalities in the personnel
Based on data confirmed by officials from power-wielding bodies in
various periods, we can say that out of 36 servicemen who died in the
past eight months, 35 served in the Defence Ministry’s units and one
in the State Border Service.
A total of 35 servicemen of the Defence Ministry, three of the State
Border Service and one of the [Interior Ministry’s] Internal Troops
died in 2005.
The number of fatalities among officers also increased in 2006.
Fatalities include eight officers in the rank from lieutenant to
colonel, one warrant officer and 27 privates and sergeants.
[Passage omitted: fatalities in 2005]
Monitoring of the country’s print and electronic media in the past
eight months shows that eight servicemen were killed in various
accidents, 10 were killed by Armenians, one in a landmine blast,
two in fires, five committed suicide, three were killed in avalanche,
six in bullying incidents and one by sunstroke.
[Passage omitted: reasons for fatalities in 2005]
The wounded
We will try clarify the situation with wounded soldiers. It has turned
out that 20 servicemen were wounded in different circumstances.
[Passage omitted: 44 soldiers were wounded in 2005]

Lab tests confirm no foot-and-mouth in Armenian district
Regnum, Moscow
25 Aug 06
25 August: The symptoms of the foot-and-mouth disease were found
in 10-15 cows in the pasture Artikskiye Dachi in Armenia’s Shirak
District on 22 August. At about 2330 [1830 gmt] on the same day, it
became known that the veterinary of the town of Artik confirmed this
information. The sick cattle were isolated and measures to prevent
the spread of the disease were taken.
However, Regnum learnt from the press service of the Rescue Service
under the Armenian Ministry of Territorial Administration that the
next day, 23 August, a report was received which said that according
to the results of laboratory tests, the disease discovered in the
cows in the Artikskiye Dachi had been diagnosed as stomatitis, which
is not infectious.

Armenian opposition leader says no peace deal without Karabakh’s involvement
Arminfo
25 Aug 06
Yerevan, 25 August: The approaches of the president of the Nagornyy
Karabakh republic [NKR], Arkadiy Gukasyan, to the resolution of
the Karabakh problem are fully harmonious with the approaches of
the Justice bloc, Stepan Demirchyan, leader of the opposition bloc,
told reporters today.
“We are confident that no agreement can be signed without the NKR
leadership’s participation,” he stressed. Asked if the NKR differed
from Armenia by a high level of development of democracy, Demirchyan
said: “Karabakh does not have the lawlessness that we encounter
in Armenia.”

CHARITY DENTAL SURGERY TO FUNCTION IN ORRAN
YEREVAN, AUGUST 25, NOYAN TAPAN. By donation of the “Children of
Armenia” charity fund, a charity dental surgery was founded at
the office of the Orran charity public organization. The solemn
opening ceremony will take place on August 30. As Susanna Manukian,
the Press Secretary of the organization informed the Noyan Tapan
correspondent, the surgery will serve children of needy families,
elderly people. Orran was founded in 2000 by Raffi and Armine
Hovannisians. In S.Manukian’s words, during its activities, Orran
helped, with charity and humane missions, more than 1500 families
and children, taking care of their food, clothes, psychological
assistance, education. 90 children and 150 elderly people are now
involved in the Orran programs.

STATE INSTITUTIONS OF SECONDARY EDUCATION TO BE FINANCED ACCORDING
TO PUPILS’ NUMBER
YEREVAN, AUGUST 25, NOYAN TAPAN. The RA Government made a decision
at the August 24 sitting on implementing financing of RA state
institutions of secondary education according to pupils’ number. The
RA Minister of Finance and Economy was instructed, after adopting
the RA annual state budget jointly with the RA Minister of Education
and Science, to adopt coefficients of the formula of financing
according to the pupils’ number, arising of the current indexes,
using corresponding coefficients for schools of mountainous, high
mountainous settlements and alone schools of the same settlement
having up to 400 pupils. The order of re-distributions being made
in expenses of state institutions of secondary education was also
adopted by the same decision. The RA Minister of Education and
Science, RA Regional Governors (Yerevan Mayor) were allowed to
make re-distributions in expenses of state instutions of secondary
education being uder their sujection, corresponding to the order
adopted by the mentioned decision. As Noyan Tapan was informed by
the RA Government’s Information and Public Relations Department,
the decision will come into force from January 1, 2007.
From: Baghdasarian