Kaliningraders have made a few giant leaps towards mankind since the Soviet era. Yes there are bankomats and now kitchen roll is appearing in many shops. But be aware that this is still a third world country.

With more tin-roofed shanties than Kingston, Jamaica, overflowing drains, pain threshold border crossings and utterly corrupt police, it’s a bananas place. I counsel not to drive here as a tourist and - absolutely, positively, definitely - not ever with kids. You can just imagine the conversation:

‘Mummy, why has Daddy been sitting in the police car for three hours?’

It doesn’t get much better if you live here. About eighty per cent of Kaliningraders live in sub standard housing. Well, ’sub standard’ is being nice. Essentially the old German houses, abandoned by the fleeing populace in 1945, are now derelict in every way, except that people somehow live in them. According to a recent report, the average waiting time for a new house in Kaliningrad is 35 years.

A typical Kaliningrad ‘hovelette’ inherited from Prussians. Even without tiles and plaster, the houses are nevertheless picturesque.

You seriously wonder if anyone is responsible for this town of post-Soviet decay built on decaying Prussian infrastructure. The last Governor was sent down for his interest in the stolen car business - once the foundation of of Kaliningrad’s GDP. Today we have Georgy Boos, ‘the construction magnate’s friend’.

I wrote earlier about the ‘Lost Tycoon‘, a foreign businessman who went missing in Kaliningrad. Well, he who was lost was found, but the good shepherd, Georgy Boos, didn’t give him away. At a bizarre press conference, Georgy assured Lithuania that their national was safe but, for some inexplicable reason, was unable to say precisely where he was. The ‘Baltic Times’ filled in later:

Stanislovas Jucius, who went missing in Kaliningrad on April 18, has reportedly been spotted at a resort in Cyprus.

Jucius, 56, is CEO of the construction company Roslitsroj. Previous guesses at his whereabouts included speculation that he might have been kidnapped and killed to eliminate him from profitable development business, that he may have been ruined by an affair with the wife of an influential, high-ranking Kaliningrad official, or that he might be forced into hiding after conflicts with the local competition.

It is now believed that the businessman was forced to hide in Cyprus by huge outstanding debts.

Jucius’ company is not doing too well out of the Kaliningrad construction boom. A report in Regnum a couple of weeks ago added:

Alexander Semkin, a colleague of Stanislovas Jucius who went missing in Kaliningrad this spring, has been murdered. According to Russia’s Regnum news agency, Semkin was found near the entrance to his Kaliningrad home on Aug. 9 having suffered knife wounds. At press time, few other details of the crime or the police investigation were available. Semkin was one of the founders and owners of the Lithuanian equity construction company Rosslitstroi. He took over as the company’s CEO after Jucius’ disappearance on April 18.

It might appear that foreign investors are even less welcome than tourists.