Wonderful. Usually, the Constitutional Court is the last refuge of the opposition, the oppressed, the aggrieved—people searching for justice. People with sad faces submit their documents there and wait for years for a ruling, with little real hope of success. People and companies that know how to "successfully fix things in court" usually do not turn to the Constitutional Court. And then this happens: Alexei Navalny drove Rosneft to the Constitutional Court Rosneft is trying to avoid providing minority shareholder Alexei Navalny with copies of the minutes from board of directors meetings. After the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered the company to do so, Rosneft filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court over the disclosure provisions of the law "On Joint-Stock Companies." If the Constitutional Court accepts the complaint, Rosneft will be able to avoid enforcing the arbitration court's ruling in the minority shareholder's favor for a long time. How terrible. A minority shareholder is terrorizing helpless businessmen. And in horror, they run to the Constitutional Court.
Really, though, it is a genuine disgrace: one of the country's largest public companies—and the largest oil company, with 75% state ownership—is engaging in blatant legal trickery just to avoid giving a shareholder documents that he is entitled to by law. And it is important to understand that in this case, Rosneft is taking an explicitly anti-state position. If, by using its ability to "pull strings" in the Constitutional Court, it gets the ruling it wants, that will deal a colossal blow to the country's investment appeal and to all Russian companies. No one will invest money in companies from a country whose Constitutional Court has restricted shareholders' right to obtain basic information from a company.