Ogoniok (Moscow) - December 8, 2008

The crisis is starting to affect the lives of celebrities: many of them are beginning to show up at venues for only a few minutes. On the contrary, foreign celebrities are searching for a golden bottom in Russia

I really like Kseniya Sobchak’s article in the last issue of one of the glossy magazines. In the article, she insists that everyone must travel to tropical islands. She also suggests that people eat fresh fish and bananas, forget about work, layoffs, and traffic jams for a while, and she offers tips about what type of handbag would suit this or that dress. We all have the chance to escape to an island, but at some point we turn into petty office workers encaged in our offices or cars, traveling from home to work and back, thus simply forgetting about “our island.” Being a manager or a windsurfing board is a lot more fun than managing a company. Physical activity is a lot better than toxic assets. These are the ideas that were discussed by officials and businessmen during the Company of the Year 2008 award ceremony organized by RBC. General Director of Alliance Continental management company Alexei Chalenko, for instance, stated on his Odnoklassniki page that Montevideo, Uruguay was his place of residence. That evening, he tried to convince a group of his friends to relocate to Latin America together and build a small Russian gated community there. Chalenko may have chosen precisely this time to relocate to Uruguay because of Yelena Baturina’s lawsuit against Chalenko’s company, which managed Inteko’s assets.

One could see that the guests of the ceremony were unusually agitated. Some of them even preferred to stay in the hall and mingle with friends instead of taking their seats to actually watch the ceremony. Co-owner of Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods David Yakobashvili was obviously discussing something serious over the phone, while President of Troika Dialog Pavel Teplukhin excused himself and left the venue. Vladimir Zhirinovsky was shouting to someone that the crisis could even help ‘cleanse’ political parties in the country. Meanwhile, my favorite socialite, Andrei Zhitinkin, was true to himself: he waited until the end of the ceremony, proceeded to the reception, took two plates of food and seemed absolutely happy with that. So things are looking up! Two or three social events are held in Moscow each day, and by all means, this is worth quite a bit. Moreover, foreign celebrities are coming to Russia more and more these days.