Political elite of Tomsk focused on the choice of possible candidates for the spring of 2009 mayor election. Confrontation over fuel prices continued in the airport of Novosibirsk. Meanwhile prosecution of Omsk demanded that the pre-announced strike of local airport employees should be recognized illegal by court. Governor of Kuzbass Aman Tuleev officially expressed his strong dissatisfaction with the quality of flights provided by S7 Airlines. Find out more in the weekly report by FederalPress.
Political elite of Tomsk focused on the choice of possible candidates for the spring of 2009 mayor election. Confrontation over fuel prices continued in the airport of Novosibirsk. Meanwhile prosecution of Omsk demanded that the pre-announced strike of local airport employees should be recognized illegal by court. Governor of Kuzbass Aman Tuleev officially expressed his strong dissatisfaction with the quality of flights provided by S7 Airlines. Find out more in the weekly report by FederalPress.
Pre-election campaign in Tomsk
Mayor pre-election campaign is at its start in Tomsk. Current mayor Nikolai Nikolaichuk is going to re-apply for the seat representing United Russia after getting the Party Presidium’s approval. Aleksandr Deev is viewed as his strongest rival and will be supported by the opposition parties.
Aerofuels vs Tolmachevo
Airport Tolmachevo, Novosibirsk, S7 Airlines and aviation fuel supplier Aerofuels are involved into a conflict around fuel supplies, which developed in a surprising direction last week. General Director of the airport Aleksey Chertenkov accused Aerofuels of “raiding”. Administration of the fuel supplier did not give any comments, but asked Mr. Chertenkov to specify what exactly he meant by the term “raiding”. It is known that Aerofuels had announced reduction of fuel prices prior to this strange accusation.
Strike in the airport of Omsk
Transport prosecution of Western Siberia applied to court with the request to recognize a strike of workers of the airport Omsk-Central planned for December 30 illegal. Prosecution office points out that such event could endanger lives and health of local citizens in case any emergency or natural disaster happens.
The strike is organized by the workers who protest against transferring status of the airport Omsk-Central from federal property to regional. They believe that regional authorities will close the airport in favor of their local project – a new airport Omsk-Fedorovka.
Aman Tuleev and his social responsibility
On December 5 an aircraft of S7 Airlines making flight A-320 Moscow-Kemerovo did not land in Kemerovo for an extra hour due to the necessity to burn out fuel. After that the aircraft landed safely, no one was harmed. However the governor of the Kemerovo Region wrote official requests to the Prime Minister, Prosecutor General, Minister of Transport and General Director of S7 Airlines demanding to replace S7 with a more trustworthy air carrier.
Publishing House in Altai
A publish house Altinformbureau was closed on November 1, but the scandal bloomed only last week. Its main investor Sergey Khachaturyan said that the journalists community should reimburse him for 62 million rubles he spent on the development of this publishing house, which used to produce 2 newspapers and an analytics journal. He also mentioned that employees of the publishing house should not wait for him to pay their wages, but address their requests to the actual top-managers of Altinformbureau.
Tax reform of Putin
Decision of the Russian government to transfer a part of revenue from taxes from the federal to the regional budget caused joy of the officials in Novosibirsk and rather reserved comments of the economy analysts.
On December 3 governmental commission on regional development headed by Vladimir Putin decided to raise the share that regional budgets get from the profits tax from 17.5% to 18%. Regional share in excise tax on oil product is prognosed to make 100%, prior to that only 60% stayed in the regional budget. Although local officials rejoice in adding 400 million rubles through taxes to the budget, as the governor of the Novosibirsk Region Viktor Tolokonsky commented, financial analysts evaluate possible increase of the budget revenues only by 1%.