I want to live like that, even in Iceland —

They spent $600 millions on “research”, (for those monies they  wrote 

an insanely large number of Nature Genetics publications ), took the country hostage by holding all its genetical materials, and now they cry, they are dying  and look for ANOTHER INVESTOR!!! Iceland will be famous not only by its banks, but by its genetics as well. http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2009/08/decode_genetics_on_the_brink_o.php

I want to live like that, even in Iceland —

They spent $600 millions on “research”, (for those monies they  wrote 

an insanely large number of Nature Genetics publications ), took the country hostage by holding all its genetical materials, and now they cry, they are dying  and look for ANOTHER INVESTOR!!! Iceland will be famous not only by its banks, but by its genetics as well. http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2009/08/decode_genetics_on_the_brink_o.php

Failed to read

This is something I was unable to read today. Any ideas which language is this??

Cheap orbital flights

This great company http://interorbital.com sells satellite kits @
US$8k, rocket partial ownewship and space tourism tickets. Moon land
plots anyone??

Found new automultiposter

Thanks to my friend mbravo, found this posterous.com site to autopost
to all my blogs simultaneously. Will see how it works. Sorry for
duplicate postings.

 Интересный сайт чтобы размещать записи сразу в нескольких блогах. Надо
попробовать попользоваться. Если у кого получатся от этого дубликаты
– извините.

Ledentsov Legacy – Hunting for 1905 treasury

Here is a story of our participation in the small treasury hunt.

There was a Russian billionaire Христофор Семенович  Леденцов (Khristophor S LEDENTSOV) (1842 -1907).   Shortly before his death  he has established the foundation, exceeding the size of Nobel foundation, with the same noble goals of financing scientific developments. Certainly, all assets of the Ledentsov foundation has been confiscated by Bolsheviks in 1918. But there was some hope that some of it could still be found, as the main business base of Ledentsov for the last years of his life was Geneve.

Nina Lukovtseva, 60+old granddaughter of the billionaire, has invited us to the sort of treasure hunt.  Except there was not much to hunt – two out of three buildings owned by Ledentsov and his society has been demolished already, and the remaining one was housing the embassy.

Then we went to the state archive, where all the documents of the foundation, including all the books and accounts for every year from 1909 to 1918 has been carefully preserved. (Moscow city historical archive it is).

The will called for the specially appointed lawyer to sell assets of the deceased, convert them into the real-property-backed securities, deposit them in the state-owned banks and only use the interest to finance the society. And the executor of the will routinely did exactly that. Until the February, 1918, when all assets of the society became the property of the Soviet State.

It became painfully clear to us after just one day of archive searches that there’s nothing to fish.  No shares unaccounted for, no properties left hanging around.

Our forensic accountant has been impressed by the quality and quantity of this 1910s accounting exposure. Detailed, clear, with all records matching.

Every was properly accounted for, and then everything properly confiscated.

The personal archive of this lawyer, named Notgaft, which was our last resort, did not survived the revolution as well . Looks like his family, which could be German or Swedish, did not survived in Russia too, as the latest mentionning of it was dated 1940s.

Ledentsov’s relatives still have some hopes to find anything, trying to bank on the fact that the society and its assets has been insured back in 1905 by Equitable Life  (now AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company,  founded in 1859).

And for us the most difficult part of the story was to tell the old woman about those findings. We did that. And a few years after the end of the story we still look at it once a year hoping that something new could surface.

Maybe you know something about it ?

“Please find my father”

Good old friend referred her 35-year-old boss. Businesswoman. She just found out that her actual father “was a cuban who studied some engineering in Moscow, Russia. Yes, 35 years ago. Yes, no sights/words/letters since.” Not even a picture. Only a bunch of small details. And a name in Russian letters only.

 Resident linguist together with database trailblazer sorted through about a thousand probable names from Cuban phone directory. Yes, Cuban telecom has a searchable phone directory. The target list was shortened to 10 contacts. (one hour)

One cuban expert said “impossible”. Another promised to make some inquiries “within a couple of months”. Third contact was not available.  (another hour of calling)

Friendly spy who spent a dozen year in Cuba and other South American destinations agreed to do some calling. We’ve gathered in his nice Moscow kitchen with a list and a phone.  (two hours party, including some drinks afterwards)

Third hit out of ten was a success. Although only a partial one. The old woman said her son died three years ago, leaving two daughters, now married. All details matched. Almost as perfect as they can. 

There was one check left, and it took almost a week – getting a word from the archive of this university where this cuban allegedly studed. With it comes the end of process. Full name matched the deceased. (another hour in total)

Businesswoman now thinks of visiting Havana. She has to hurry a bit – the newly found “grandmother” may not have a lot of time left on the earth.

And we are looking for more challenges. Summer is over. Time to work.

Funny notes of today

Found while checking – the boilerplate letter says ‘Ishim is almost like a village but it’s so close to Tumen, only several minutes by bus so I do all shopping and everything in Tumen.’

The fact is that the city of Ishim is 320 km SW from Tyumen. And it had 64.8 thousand inhabitants in 2006.

I’d really wish to have the shopping bus flying that fast. To that small village.

Why don’t they check those small details?
 

Introduction

Asy Patrysheva, the genius behind the successfull travel.ru site has once complained about the number of russian marriage scams going on, and the adverse effect they have on other internet projects. This brought in an idea. The gang of four decided to give it a try. So far – successfull.

I am a Head of Operations.  Responsible for doing things right.

There are plenty of fun stories in our research/investigations business.  We decided to put them here for your fun.  We will try to write several times a week, but if it does not always happen – excuse us. We are working to dig more fun stories for you.