14 DECEMBER 1991, Page 30

Friends fall out

ROBERT Maxwell's are not the only accounts with a hole in them. Some $4 bil- lion seems to be missing from the late Sovi- et Union's reserves. Valentin Falin, head of the late Communist Party's international depapment, stressed the importance of using them to maintain payments to friend- ly firms abroad — but which firms can they have been? Surely those multi-volume edi- tions of the wit and wisdom of Erich Honecker were a commercial venture on their publisher's part? I should hate to think that his financial difficulties stemmed in any way from the changing of the guard in Moscow, and the departure of his old chums who had keys to the safe. Three of them seem to have fallen out of windows. There is a lot of it about.