If you think that, after winning our court cases against Transneft, we received all the documents we were entitled to in full, then you are underestimating the crooks’ persistence of the Transneft crowd and overestimating the effectiveness of the judicial system. On February 17, 2011, the Moscow Arbitration Court ruled that Transneft had to provide copies of the Board of Directors’ minutes, in this case for 2009.
The Transneft crowd unsuccessfully tried to appeal this ruling in both appellate and cassation courts, but in the end they were forced to comply and sent us three boxes of minutes.
On August 25, 2011, the bailiff issued an order closing the enforcement proceedings on the grounds that the writ had been effectively executed.
As is clear from the court ruling and the writ of execution, they were required to provide the minutes in full, without any exceptions. In Transneft’s cover letter, they also stated that they had sent us the full texts of the minutes.
However, when we started digging through those boxes, we discovered that the crooks at Transneft were trying to deceive me, the court, and the bailiff service. Specifically: of the 24 sets of minutes requested, only 10 were provided in full. Instead of the other 14, they supplied only extracts, which directly contradicts the court ruling and means the Transneft crowd has something to hide. In other words, for 14 meetings we have only partial information — for example, “agenda item 3,” and so on. What was so secret about the other agenda items is unclear, but judging by what they are hiding, there was clearly something there. Probably something like this: Having heard the report of Transneft chief Tokarev, the Board of Directors resolves to approve the theft of another $3 billion, to be transferred into Swiss bank accounts. Next we move on to the “Miscellaneous” section and consider the question of preserving the company tradition of eating children at corporate holiday parties. I can’t specify in this post exactly what they gave us and what they withheld — that’s exactly what the Transneft crowd is waiting for, so they can start squealing: he’s a bad-faith shareholder! he disclosed confidential information! Naturally, we reported the falsification to the bailiffs and appealed the closure of the enforcement proceedings to the Zamoskvoretsky District Bailiffs’ Office, but were turned down. Either they were too lazy to do their job, or Transneft had a word with them. We then filed a complaint with the Moscow bailiffs’ directorate, where our complaint was признана well-founded and sent back to the Zamoskvoretsky District Bailiffs’ Office.
So now we can only hope that, after this additional review, the bailiffs will - hold the crooks at Transneft accountable for failing to comply with the court ruling; - storm Transneft’s headquarters using helicopters, water cannons, police dogs, and Magistrate Judge Borovkova (a notorious Moscow judge, here jokingly described as a secret weapon), and force them to hand over every last set of minutes. After all, we’re supposedly a state governed by the rule of law. Supremacy of law. A campaign for transparency in state-owned companies. An international financial center, no less. And of course it is purely accidental, not systemic, that shareholders first spend two years in court, win every case, and then spend another year trying to pry loose what they already won.