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In Russia, Corporate Thugs Use Legal Guise
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The multiple attacks in the courts are a pretext to establish some legal basis to send security guards to seize the building, Gubinsky said. If they successfully occupy the targeted property, the police typically tell the ejected party to go to court and fight it there.
As a defense, Na Ilyinke's building now resembles an armed camp. An alarm system at the front entrance can trigger the closing of steel doors that seal off all sections of the building. The rear entrance has a large steel gate and is surrounded by barbed wire.
"If you lose physical possession of your property, you are in serious trouble," Gubinsky said. "So far, we've kept them out."
Other owners wish they'd taken such precautions.
Near Moscow's Kiev railroad station, a group of prominent artists is battling in the courts to get back light-filled studios that were seized last April by private security guards after the ownership of the studios was re-registered in what the artists call a fraudulent transaction. The studios would fetch millions if converted to penthouse apartments.
"It was monstrous," said Lev Tabenkin, a painter who was forced out after the raiders persuaded a court to issue an eviction order. "I don't understand our system."
In January, Rinat Kudashev, general director of a former state institute that designs pipelines and other facilities for transporting oil and gas, was escorted out of his offices by about 30 private guards. The previous November, he said in an interview, one of the institute's minority shareholders called a meeting without the knowledge of Kudashev or the company's two majority shareholders and merged the business with another company. The original two companies were then liquidated.
Vitaly Semyonov, general director of a Moscow transportation company, said his company has been raided 31 times by different government agencies, the orchestrated prelude to a $10 million offer for a business that he values at $25 million. He rejected the offer, he said, not only because it was low, but because what the raiders really wanted was the land his business sits on -- and they intended to lay off his 1,000 workers. He remains ensnared in several court actions.
"In the '90s, your enemy operated openly and you knew how to defend yourself," Semyonov said. "I was shot by bandits who wanted our business, but we survived. Today I'm facing Oxford-educated lawyers."
