I first saw the news come across my alerts around the New Year that three men had been arrested by the Russian police for the attempted murder of the journalist John Helmer.  The story was broken on Jan. 2 by a South African outlet called TIMES Live, but because details were sketchy and I had never heard of the news outlet, it slipped past me.

Though it has taken a couple of weeks, the news of the attempted hit on Helmer and new allegations that Rusal and Oleg Deripaska were behind it, have gone viral.  On Jan. 9th, the Australian (where Helmer is originally from) published a new angle, which indicated that the attack was averted only because the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared intel with the journalist that the hit was coming his way.  The Australian article got picked up by Dave D’Alessandro of the Star-Ledger over the weekend (who probably has interest in the news as related to NJ Nets buyer Mikhail Prokhorov), and since then the it has been picked up by the highly visible political blogger Matt Taibi, an old friend of Helmer.

A few questions come up.  What exactly did Helmer write about Deripaska and Rusal to provoke such an alleged assassination plot?  Could this come at a worse time for the billionaire, right when the WSJ is slagging him, and company fends of “misconceptions” before the debut of its $2.6 billion Hong Kong IPO?  It doesn’t really make sense.