Terry Macalister
Monday April 23, 2007
A worsening of relations between Britain and Russia has unnerved the UK business community and led to a partial boycott of an important bilateral conference on economic affairs scheduled to start in London today attended by the trade and industry secretary, Alistair Darling.
One third of UK business leaders said the rapport between Britain and Russia was either “difficult and getting worse” or “strained and unfriendly” while nearly half consider further Russian investment in Britain as a “bad thing”, according to a YouGov poll.
The results have been released on the eve of the annual Russian Economic Forum at the Queen Elizabeth 2 Centre in central London, an event which has already been damaged by a walkout by top Russian speakers linked to the Kremlin.
The poll for YouGov , which shows that 62% of those responding believe Russian businessmen are “arrogant”, 59% agreed that they were “lawless” and 47% said they were “unreliable” was conducted between April 10 and 15, just as a series on Russia was published by the Guardian.
In one article, the London-based Russian dissident Boris Berezovsky called for the violent overthrow of Vladimir Putin’s government, a statement which led to Kremlin calls for Britain to hand him over and sent UK-Russian relations plunging.
This is seen as one reason why half a dozen top speakers from Russia, including Arkady Dvorkovich, Mr Putin’s special economic adviser, and Kirill Androsov, deputy minister of economic trade and development, have also cancelled their appearances.
Other speakers who have abruptly pulled out include Sergei Bogdanchikov, president of the largely state-owned oil group Rosneft, plus Peter Aven, chief executive of Alfa Bank, are also among the speakers who are suddenly unable to participate.
The relations between the two countries on economic affairs have not been helped by the Kremlin flexing its muscles at home with the state-owned Gazprom last week securing Shell’s agreement to hand over a 50% stake in the huge Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas project.
BP has also come under pressure to cede power in a TNK project in Siberia amid wider speculation that Gazprom plans to buy out the Russian partners in TNK-BP. The recent YouGov poll for the non-governmental organisation Russian Axis of 147 senior British executives show half of them said Russia was either a “fairly” or “very” unattractive place to invest.
A simultaneous survey of Russian executives paints a different picture about Britain, with almost half believing that the UK was either a very or fairly attractive place to invest. More than 80% of the Russians polled deemed their British counterparts “prudent” rather than risk-takers and 95% thought of them as law-abiding while only 4% of British executives saw Russian counterparts as law-abiding.
And 77% of UK business people said doing business in Russia was made difficult by corruption and the lack of the rule of law. Conversely, 27% of them said Gazprom would not be welcome in Britain at a time when this paper recently revealed it still harboured plans to expand here and made clear it still might launch a bid for a British energy company at some stage.
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2063254,00.html
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
