wigstheone
Jul 16, 02, 9:33 pm
MOSCOW -- Russia won't be sending any of its world-famous Sukhoi and MiG jet fighters to next week's Farnborough air show -- for fear they may never return.
Officials are worried the planes may become the latest target of Cie. Noga d'Importation et d'Exportation, a small Swiss trading firm that has waged a campaign to grab Russian assets abroad in retaliation for Moscow's refusal to pay up on a 10-year-old debt.
Noga has frozen Russian bank accounts, impounded sailing ships and confiscated planes in a vain attempt to force Russia to honor a settlement won at an arbitration tribunal in Stockholm which awarded the company more than $110 million (&euro109.4; million).
Managers at Sukhoi and MiG said the decision not to send planes to the U.K. was prompted by an incident at Le Bourget air show last year, when a Paris court acting on behalf of Noga attached two planes -- a Sukhoi Su-30 fighter, and a MiG-AT trainer. The jets scrambled and flew back to Russia before they could be seized.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1026845865155339600,00.html?mod=DAI
Officials are worried the planes may become the latest target of Cie. Noga d'Importation et d'Exportation, a small Swiss trading firm that has waged a campaign to grab Russian assets abroad in retaliation for Moscow's refusal to pay up on a 10-year-old debt.
Noga has frozen Russian bank accounts, impounded sailing ships and confiscated planes in a vain attempt to force Russia to honor a settlement won at an arbitration tribunal in Stockholm which awarded the company more than $110 million (&euro109.4; million).
Managers at Sukhoi and MiG said the decision not to send planes to the U.K. was prompted by an incident at Le Bourget air show last year, when a Paris court acting on behalf of Noga attached two planes -- a Sukhoi Su-30 fighter, and a MiG-AT trainer. The jets scrambled and flew back to Russia before they could be seized.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1026845865155339600,00.html?mod=DAI