cape for a govt with even less ethics.
Hail Putin!
29-Year-Old Russian Hedge Fund Founder Disappears With All The Firm's Money
- JAN. 5, 2015, 8:12 AM
- 46,806
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REUTERS/Sergei KarpukhinA boy in Red Square, with St. Basil's Cathedral in the background, in central Moscow, on Dec. 25.
The value of the ruble isn't the only thing that is vanishing in Russia. A Moscow hedge fund chief executive has disappeared, along with all the money in the firm's accounts.
That's according to a stunning feature in The Wall Street Journal. Kim Karapetyan, 29, the youthful founder of Blackfield Capital CJSC, has disappeared, much to the dismay of his staff, which didn't know until a group of men charged into the firm's plush offices.
From The Journal:
The firm’s employees didn’t know anything was amiss until mid-October, when three men charged into Blackfield’s offices in an upscale complex along the Moscow River in central Moscow, said people who were there.
The men, who didn't identify themselves, said they were looking for Blackfield's 29-year-old founder, Kim Karapetyan, according to the people who were there.
But Mr. Karapetyan wasn't in the office that day or the next, when senior executives explained to the staff of about 50 that there was no longer any money to pay their salaries, said one former senior executive and ex-employees. The executives disclosed that all the money in the company accounts — some $20 million, including investor cash — was also missing, they said. It couldn't be determined whether investors were from Russia or other countries.
"Our CEO just … disappeared," said Sergey Grebenkin, one of the firm's software developers, in an interview.
No attempts to contact or find Karapetyan were successful, and he is still MIA. The company's website brags that its "systematic investment process helps avoid human-factor, cognitive-biases, and emotional-trading errors," but the CEO running away with all your money seems like a fairly big human error.
blackfieldcapital.ru/en/
Karapetyan is a bit of a playboy: He flew the early-2000s boyband Blue into Russia for a company New Year's Eve performance in 2013 and paid $15,000 (£9,800) per month for a flat in New York's financial district, setting a record for rent per square foot in the area. He also instructed US employees of the fund to buy an Aston Martin Vanquish.
Wikimedia CommonsAn Aston Martin Vanquish.
Since Karapetyan went missing, The Wall Street Journal found some incredible inconsistencies in his career history, too. He said he had worked at Morgan Stanley as a portfolio manager and graduated with a master's degree from the London School of Economics. Neither institution has any record of him.
Apparently until recently Blackfield had rented out 18 offices on the 46th floor of 7 World Trade Center in New York, with a view to expansions in the US. The firm also planned a London expansion, but unless he's hiding in a Kensington basement, it seems likely that the fund will be making that move anytime soon.
Check out the full report at The Journal >
fam, his whole shyt is worth like 1/2 nowLol. That guy deserves all the pain he is gonna get when the investors find him. He better hope the police catch him first
unless he converted that money into dollars before december... He's been gone since mid-Octoberfam, his whole shyt is worth like 1/2 now
cut your nose off brehs
Surely, WW3 is comingRussian Prostitutes Hike Rates Over Slumping Ruble
Getting laid in Russia just became more expensive.
The crime of buying sexual services is becoming more expensive in Russia as prostitutes increase their rates to offset the free-falling ruble, regional media reported.
An escort agency in the northern port of Murmansk has raised prices by 30 to 40 percent, news website Flashnord.com reported.
The pre-crisis price was 3,000 to 7,000 rubles ($55 to $130 at Thursday's rate) per two hours of "spending time with an agency employee," Flashnord said Tuesday.
The price will likely be pegged to the dollar in the future, the website said. Though prostitution is illegal in Russia, the report gave the name of the alleged brothel, Madlen.
A representative of another "escort salon" named World of Sex in Murmansk was cited as saying that the enterprise "is trying to keep prices as they were, but life's getting more expensive, and girls can't work at a loss."
In the Urals, sex workers have raised prices by between 50 and 100 percent, Uralpolit.ru said Wednesday, citing unnamed clients of prostitutes.
In addition to the falling ruble, the sex tariff inflation may have been boosted by an influx of sex workers fleeing war-torn Ukraine, the website said. The new competition is forcing local sex workers to hike their rates in order to pay their bills, the report said.
The ruble has lost almost 40 percent of its value against the dollar since the start of the year due to an economic downturn.
Sex workers make up about 1 million of Russia's 142 million population, Deputy Interior Minister Igor Zubov said last year.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/...e-rates-over-slumping-ruble-media/512596.html
Surely, WW3 is coming