With no small amount of pride, I present to you Russia’s first officially recognized bad-faith, rights-abusing shareholder. That is, myself. That is what the Moscow Arbitration Court declared me to be, at the request of the very conscientious company Rosneft. You probably remember that after many months of legal wrangling, we finally forced Rosneft and Transneft to provide shareholders with basic documents: minutes of Board of Directors meetings. We then kept pushing in that direction and began requesting certain documents related to transactions that raise certain questions—which we are fully entitled to do under the law—including Rosneft’s “Chinese contract.” The interest is entirely natural; the various maneuvers around this contract and the associated $15 billion loan have been written about constantly, and still are. Rosneft’s whole defense boiled down to “Navalny is bad and calls people names.” They brought printouts from this cozy little blog (including your comments), and so on. All of this only provoked laughter in the courtroom, especially given that even the FSFM (the Russian financial markets regulator). supported our demands. And yet on April 13, Judge Golovkina issued a decision that stunned everyone: “Navalny’s claim denied.” After that came a whole saga of trying to pry the reasoning part of the ruling out of Judge Golovkina—why exactly deny it? The full text of the decision was written only a month later (!), and we were able to get a copy only after filing a complaint against Golovkina with the judicial qualifications board. The decision still is not on the court’s website. A magnificent document—feel free to take a look. I understand why Judge Golovkina was so embarrassed to hand it over to us. They had to mobilize the full capabilities of the “court-fixing operators,” the Kalandas spouses, to make a court produce something this hellish—even in our already difficult times for justice:
So: first, Navalny has already read everything in the newspapers, so he is not entitled to the documents. second, he does not attend shareholder meetings. third, he has already published documents from various companies (to prove this, Rosneft brought printouts of my posts about Transneft and the ESPO pipeline). It’s simply brilliant. Especially the part about “did not attend meetings.” Rosneft has more than 100,000 individual shareholders. About 300 to 400 people attend the meetings. Are all the rest bad-faith abusers too? Many investment funds do not attend meetings either, and do not even vote. Is there something wrong with them as well? Rosneft’s previous meeting was in Krasnodar. Before that, it was in St. Petersburg. What am I supposed to do—follow Rosneft around like fans in a rock star support group, traveling in a trailer bus wearing a branded Rosneft T-shirt? Very convenient. The conscientious “Rosneft,” which for some unclear reason sells oil through Gunvor, the offshore company of Gennady “Gangrene” Timchenko, who renounced Russian citizenship, considers me dishonest because I do not attend meetings. And that means there is no need to show me any documents. Not about Gunvor. Not about the Chinese contract. Not about suspiciously lavish charitable spending. Nor about the astronomical costs of the investment program. All of that is supposedly an “unfounded interest.” As in: keep your nose out of our business. Mikhal Ivanych
and Gangrene
know exactly what they’re doing. And the new head of Rosneft stands guard over their interests.
(I wonder what nickname he has among “his own people”? Beaver?) We will, of course, fight this ruling to the very end. And it’s not even about the little thieves at Rosneft: if this becomes accepted practice, then any shareholder in any company can be declared bad-faith over some absurd nonsense. Didn’t come to the meeting. Came, but didn’t speak. Spoke, but not actively enough. Spoke actively, but didn’t vote. Criticized the company in the media and disclosed information. Chose a tie in colors that were too bright. Uses the word “by no means” far too often. According to the Interior Ministry, abuses alcohol. Did not take part in a rally supporting United Russia (the Kremlin-backed ruling party), which means he does not want the country’s revival, which means he does not want the company’s market capitalization to grow.