Rosneft Will Open Up to Navalny The court ordered the company to share the minutes of the board of directors meeting with a minority shareholder, but with certain caveats. Read in full
Today there was a very long but lively hearing on Rosneft’s appeal against the Moscow commercial court’s ruling ordering the company to provide me with the board of directors’ minutes. As the presiding judge said, “This is more interesting than the TV show *K Barieru* (*To the Barrier*, a Russian debate program).” Rosneft’s position was: Navalny is a bad-faith shareholder, he is abusing his rights, and we will give him nothing. You can judge the evidentiary basis for these claims by looking, for example, at this:
The Rosneft people literally hauled in a suitcase full of printouts from LiveJournal posts and comments, various interviews, Wikipedia articles, and so on. So for two hours we were sorting out whether I am an ordinary shareholder or a Particularly Malicious Enemy. In the end, the court decided to amend the lower court’s ruling. Originally it was: Give Navalny these specific minutes. Now it is: Give Navalny these specific minutes, subject to the company’s information disclosure policy. Overall, I am satisfied with the court’s decision: 1. I requested the minutes back in December 2009. This mess has been dragging on for more than a year. Now they will definitely have to hand something over. 2. The idiotic issue of the “bad-faith shareholder” has been decisively beaten back and closed — that was the most potentially dangerous part. What is bad: 1. The reference to Rosneft’s internal policy in the ruling gives them room to jerk us around and try to black out information in the documents that they are actually required to leave in. We’ll see how much documentation they provide, and then we’ll decide whether to appeal.