currently being cultivated here, there is very little else of note in this desolate and desperate wasteland.

There are only two flights a week to and from Kazakhstan – none direct from London; only via Moscow or Istanbul. The inbound flight arrives every Wednesday morning; the outward bound flight leaves approximately two hours later. Therefore, if you can’t conduct your business in under two hours, preferably at the airport to cut down on travelling time, then you’re stuck there for a week.

St Petersburg is much more accessible and has three direct flights a week with British Airways from Heathrow. Unusually, but not surprisingly, as you fly due east, the flight time is approximately the same as the time difference – three hours. The flight is not the problem; if you want to go to Russia, your problems start long before then. You must apply to the Russian embassy for a visa. Together with this application must be a letter from your Russian client inviting you to their offices and confirmation of your hotel booking.

You cannot just stay with your friends in Russia: unless you have your own accommodation, you must have reserved a hotel room for your stay. There are half a dozen good hotels in St Petersburg, all of five-star quality (and price). The food is also very good. Most of it is driven in from Finland each day. The Finnish border is only about four hours’ drive from St Petersburg.

Nearly all the large capitalised businesses in Russia are funded by Western money. In the first quarter of this year, US$400 million of foreign funds was channelled into the country. Foreign investment totalled US$2.9 billion last year. Nearly all of these businesses are joint ventures with Russian parties. The westerners provided the capitalisation and some heads of department, but the businesses are staffed by Russians. The General Director (managing

The largest department store in St Petersburg

The problem with all this is that 9am in St Petersburg is 6am our time and 5pm in Toronto is 10pm our time. So when the accounts are due to be finalised each month, our days become rather long. Our saving grace is that the Russians can speak good English and the Canadians’ English is passable.

Prior to accepting the assignment, we had to consider the impact that this would have on the practice and our ability to deal with it. As we were giving no audit opinion and we were only dealing with one subsidiary of the holding company, which in turn had its quarterly statements and year-end accounts audited by external auditors, then it was felt that no undue influence could be placed on us. Obviously we had to increase our professional indemnity insurance. Funnily enough, we found that we were a ‘one-off’. After three tries, we ended up with an American firm who, for a nice fee, thought that they could help us out. I was not sure who was helping who, as I passed my large cheque over to them!

The next problem was sorting out where all the telecommunication sites
sites were and how to account for them all. Fortunately, I had been to St Petersburg before, but hadn’t explored the Russian hinterland. The place is enormous: 36,000 miles of border, containing 15 of the former Soviet republics and covering one sixth of the earth’s land mass. Russia’s economy has the world’s richest natural resources. Very significant deposits of diamonds have been found in the Arkhangelsk and St Petersburg regions of Russia. Russia actually produces more diamonds now than South Africa. This fact seems to have triggered De Beers into action, since large volumes of diamonds as could be supplied by Russia, coming onto the market at unplanned times, could severely affect the world price and destabilise the market.

The company’s second major base of operations is Kazakhstan in Siberia. This is the second largest republic within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and is reputed to have more oil and gas deposits than the whole of Kuwait. Kazakhstan has three oil refineries, producing some 27 million tons of crude oil a year. Apart from the 7.5 million acres of cannabis that is



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