Raiding

- Raiding. When did this phenomenon appear in Kazakhstan?

Such human evils as greed, money-grubbing and aspiration to enrich oneself at the expense of another person underlie the phenomenon of raiding. The term "raiding" has come to the modern vocabulary from the English language. "Raiding" is translated as "invasion", "attack", "intrusion", "raid". Within this meaning, raiding has gone along with the human history from primitive times, when the strongest would take away prey from the weakest, until today when an invader in tandem with administrative resources misappropriates a commercially attractive enterprise.

In our understanding, raiding appeared with birth of a human being and will go along with him constantly. With enhancement of legislation and rise of ethic level and moral standards, however, this phenomenon will be fading away but will unlikely disappear for good.

What is raiding? Raiding is a means of misappropriation of another person's property. It is "easier to take something away than to create this something". Those who misappropriate another person's property are never engaged in production or rendering of services. Raiding gives a possibility to acquire a "fast buck" - seize an enterprise and sell it at a higher price...

In Kazakhstan, the raiding phenomenon existed in Soviet times, when there was no private property, but there were vast pastures. At first, the Party reported about enormous harvest and then about soil erosion and disutility of flora and fauna. This phenomenon also manifested itself in labour relations when a professional and experienced specialist would be assigned to supervise over a complicated field of production operations. Such specialist would take production on the right track, but would eventually be replaced by a relative, a friend, etc.

With the advent of private property, temptation to take possession of somebody's private property naturally escalated. Initially, this phenomenon was referred to simply as "racketing" and eventually "raiding", where not brigandish methods of raiding but methods with involvement of state officials were directed towards legal entities.

Within the meaning defined in the legislation of Kazakhstan, raiding appeared in Kazakhstan together with the advent of private property institute and has its own periodicity. The beginning of the first period of raiding in Kazakhstan coincides with the period of privatization, the second period - with the end of the 90-s and the third period - from 2008 until today.

- What are the features based on which you can determine that a corporate raid is planned in relation to your enterprise?

First of all, an enterprise must be successful, commercially attractive and have a potential; its foundation documents are far from perfect; statutory procedures and procedures set forth in the enterprise's foundation documents for corporate decision-making and for alienation of participatory interest in the charter capital are not observed; there is a heavy credit debt; the enterprise's entrepreneurship activity depends on intellectual property (trade mark, industrial design, firm name) that is not duly registered; there is a conflict between shareholders (participants) of the enterprise; blood/friendly/marital relations between participants are in place; there are corporate relations that are not duly specified in respective documents; internal conflicts, i.e. conflicts between the enterprise's owner and its managers, are in place, etc.

If, with one the above features in place, minority shareholders/owners of participatory interests file different kinds of, factitious as a rule, claims, the purpose of which is to...