The Navalny Case The Higher Arbitration Court (VAS, Russia’s top commercial court at the time) has taken an interest in the case of “Alexei Navalny v. Rosneft.” It intends to settle the dispute between minority shareholders and company management over the right to access information once and for all. In mid-August, Rosneft minority shareholder Alexei Navalny won a ruling from the Moscow Arbitration Court ordering the company to provide him with the minutes of board of directors meetings for 2009. Read the full article Very interesting. I’m all for informational letters, of course, but I’m a little uneasy about VAS’s determination to issue clarifications now, just when we’ve got Rosneft by the tail. And we plan to do the same with Transneft. This has been dragging on for years, but before this they never felt like clarifying anything. The law "On Joint-Stock Companies" spells it all out in black and white: a shareholder may obtain any documents except accounting records and management board minutes (for those, you need a 25% stake). If VAS explains more clearly what exactly counts as "accounting records," that would be great. If, at the prompting of Rosneft and Transneft, it turns into some nonsense about state secrets, a "balance of interests," and the "interests of the company," then such clarifications will pave the way for the final destruction of shareholder rights. We all know about their so-called state secrets. How much was stolen, and to which jurisdiction it was moved—Cayman or the Virgin Islands. Those are the two main questions of corporate governance in Russia.