In the well-known Sherlock Holmes mystery, "The Hound of the Baskervilles," the clue that everyone missed, but the great detective spotted, was something that didn't happen. The dog that should have barked didn't.

In forecasting the direction of the Russian metals sector this year, it is easy to identify the direction metals proprietors are taking in trade, ownership, sourcing and financing. But what is missing is a clear sign from the Russian government of what its policy is toward the conflicts that are shaping each of the metals industries.

In trade, for example, it is obvious that the financial schemes that were used by the Trans World group, overseen from London by the Reuben brothers, and implemented in Russia by the Chernoy brothers, have been halted.

Trans World did not invent trading schemes, nor was it the only beneficiary of them.

In essence, these schemes maximized the cost of inputs to metal-production plants, such as iron ore, coal, coke, alumina and bauxite. They then minimized the selling price of the metals at the factory gate, while once over the border, the metals fetched much higher prices. The difference between the price the factory received for its output and the export revenue was passed through a variety of anonymously named trading companies and bank accounts all over the world, until the funds landed in the hands of the plant’s shareholders. Thus, production was swiftly cashed into dividends at the expense of the producer's capital.

Trading or tolling schemes, as they are also called, have been the way in which the shareholders of Russian metal combines removed the capital of the industry and invested it offshore.

The fight over shareholdings in the metal plants was first and foremost a fight to capture this cash flow. At first, the fight was waged with the crudest of all possible weapons – physical violence. Then more sophisticated methods were developed, using Russia's bankruptcy laws. In this process, the regional and federal courts have played the role of accessories, not adjudicators.

It is conventional to think that the financial crash of 1998 destroyed many of the banking structures that facilitated trading schemes, and were controlled by the same people. A new generation of oligarchs, it was thought, began to develop their industrial and financial holdings on the ruins of the old ones. The replacement of the Yeltsin administration by the Putin administration promised a new approach to the oligarchs as individuals and to the industrial policy they represented.

But what is the Putin administration's approach to capital flight in the metals trade? For more than a year now, the government has concentrated on chasing the dollar receipts it could lay its hands on, while taxing the physical movement of metal exports as they left the country. No attempt has been made to investigate the trading arrangements of the metal producers, or audit the transfer pricing that is the core of every trading scheme. In other words, the proprietors of the metals sector may be changing, but the trading schemes continue without complaint from the Kremlin.

Consider another aspect of the government's policy towards the metals trade. For almost a year, Russia's steel-pipe and tubemakers cooperated in an investigation by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the injury inflicted on their industry by a surge of Ukrainian pipes since 1999.

The ministry concluded last December that serious injury had been caused by the imports and proposed a 40 percent penalty duty to curb them.

The government responded by months of delay, while it listened to the Ukraine, and also to the Russian oil and gas industry argue against import duties. In the end, a few days ago, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov agreed to impose the recommended duties, but suspended their introduction until next January, while giving the Ukrainians a quota on imports to follow in the meantime. In theory, if the quota doesn't curb the imports to a level that isn't ruinous for the domestic producers, the duties will kick in next year.

This was the most protracted and complex trade limit ever negotiated by a Russian government since 1991. All other metal-trade disputes of the past decade have been resolved more swiftly, and more simply.

In 1997, for example, the Russian government accepted quotas imposed by the European Union on steel trade. In 1999, the government accepted an even more comprehensive set of limits on Russian steel exports to the United States. During these years, the steelmakers complained bitterly at the lack of trade defense by such ministers as Anatoly Chubais and Mikhail Fradkov.

Today, it is evident the present Russian government is almost as uncomfortable defending its metal exports in foreign markets as its predecessors were. The present trade minister German Gref recently visited the United States, but managed to say nothing on the subject and ignored the steel-trade pact of 1999, which has halted all steel sales to the U.S. market. But why should Moscow demonstrate a greater willingness to penalize Ukraine than it has shown towards the United States? In trade politics, if you never retaliate when attacked, except when the stake attacker is weak, then your rivals have every incentive to trade to your disadvantage. It becomes obvious, as it was during the Yeltsin years, that the Kremlin barks when it won't bite.

The ownership of steel, copper and aluminum plants, of the sources of their raw materials and of the rolling-mills and manufacturers who consume their products remains a constant source of metal-industry news. With the help of Boris Jordan, Vladimir Potanin, the oligarch who commands the Interros group, managed to buy last year a 34 percent stake in Novolipetsk Metal Combine, the third-largest steelmaker in Russia. Potanin may have been led by Jordan to believe he could pull off a hostile takeover against the management led by Vladimir Lisin, but that hasn't happened. Instead, Potanin is stalling the development plans of the corporation. In this conflict, not a word has escaped from the Kremlin on whether the conflict at Novolipetsk is good for the steel industry.

Early in May, the federal government remained silent while the chief engineer of a regional electricity utility, KrasnoyarskEnergo, turned off the flow of power to Russia's second-largest aluminum smelter, Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant (KrAZ). In the production of aluminum metal by electrolysis, a stoppage of power for long enough can cause such damage to the production line it can become inoperable – and less costly to replace than to repair.

The merits of the argument between smelters and utilities over the cost of power were being debated in court at the time, but that didn't restrain KrasnoyarskEnergo from cutting electricity for three hours, and then threatening a longer cutoff a few days later.

The argument over tariffs is an important one, and not just for Krasnoyarsk region or the Russian aluminum industry. But the method used by the utility to enforce payment of a higher tariff threatened an industrial asset of such size that it is astonishing the federal government remained silent throughout the power crisis. In the northwest of the United States, where power shortages and rising electricity prices are having a dramatic effect on the aluminum industry, as well as everyone else, a similar problem has attracted strong-spoken responses from Washington. Yet Moscow has been silent.

It is ironic that government policy towards the metals industries has been expressed most clearly in the precious-metals sector, which is the most secretive.

It is now clear that the federal government will not allow a single producer like Norilsk Nickel, or commercial interests like the state or commercial banks, determine the direction of trade, or even the pricing of exports. For the first time in a decade, Russian policy toward precious metals (especially platinum and palladium) reflects a clear national interest – whether the commercial interests involved support that or not.