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Comment by diskapital | Hacker News Reader

> Gazprom attenpted to change owners and default the company.

Is that illegal?

I wonder about rule of law. We talk about this as sacrosanct here in the "West".

It is funny that when push comes to shove (in my perception at least), we're quick to break the rules to get the outcome we want.

When say a 3rd world country does something like this in response to a "Western" multinational's actions (perhaps a controversial example would be Mossadegh nationalizing APOC), then the response we take it is pretty severe (often involving significant amounts of violence) and we portray ourselves as being "morally" rightous, often with the very same "rule of law" claim.

Just something I like to think about in this scenario. Not trying to push any agenda.

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> > Gazprom attenpted to change owners and default the company.

> Is that illegal? I wonder about rule of law. We talk about this as sacrosanct here in the "West".

Ignoring the geopolitical aspects and the “critical infrastructure” aspects: yes it’s illegal everywhere to unilaterally abrogate a contract or to use bankruptcy or such rules to evade contract.

Normally of course this would be handled through the courts, but the answer to your question is “yes”

That's correct, it depends a lot on the perspective. We justify this because it's critical infrastructure, which is a good enough reason to me, but if a 3rd world country would argue with critical infrastructure, the narrative in western countries would be very different (assuming it would lead to some conflict of interests - otherwise, sure fine!).

We definitely need to get rid of our double standards. All complaints about this from non-western countries are mostly correct.

Well, Germany is at (economic) war with Russia so the “rules” are different.

"Is that illegal?"

"The German economy ministry said Gazprom Germania violated foreign trade law."

"Germany's economy ministry justified the takeover by saying it had not granted permission for the Gazprom Germania acquisition. Permission is required, the ministry said, if the investors are not from the European Union and "critical infrastructure" is involved."

> "The German economy ministry said Gazprom Germania violated foreign trade law."

And that's sufficient basis for a legal system to reassign ownership of assets?

Just for debate, lets say Google search is critical infrastructure and Google unilaterally took some action that upset the German economy ministry, would the legal system enable German authorities to take over assets that Google had within Germany and/or areas still under German control?

Broadly speaking, countries are sovereign and can do almost anything they’d like in this context. It is most of the time limited by treaties and trade agreements, so I suppose Russia could make a stink and complain with things like the WTO.

You’d have to dig into the specifics of German law in this case, but this is really unsurprising. Sales are routinely blocked and companies nationalised (with compensation, in civilised countries, though the fraud aspect could change this in this instance).

Gazprom Germania can believe the government is wrong and take it to the courts, but the legal argument seems sound.

There are additional rules for critical national infrastructure. The gas company didn't follow them and this gave the government the legal right to seize the business.

Honest question: Then why did they (Germany) allow Gazprom to own critical infra. in the first place?

Honest answer: Because they were following the rules up until that point.

This is probably one of those circumstances where law gets so complicated that you are always in violation of something. That way, when the authority needs you in one way or the other the haul you in front of a judge for your "violation of the law" unless you cooperate with their demands.

You ask a question, then immediately assume the answer and draw conclusions based on that answer. I dispute that this is just something you like to think about ("Just asking questions here...") or that you are not pushing an agenda.

I beg forgiveness if my question and thoughts on the matter are somehow perceived as an agenda. I haven't studied the Gazprom case carefully, but after all, the title of OP's article is "Germany has seized control of Gazprom", not Germany has lawfully taken over management of Gazprom assets after a protracted court case establishing ownership and takeover processes, so am I really at fault for drawing conclusions based on that?

Perhaps I was too harsh, and you are not a native English speaker? "Seize" simply means to take control. The second definition in Miriam Webster is "to take control by legal means".

Police seize drugs, for example.

There is a huge difference between the rule of law in proper democracies ("Rechtsstaaten") and arbitrary political decisions in totalitarian states (such as Russia).

German ministers can implement some draconian decisions, but they are operating in a large system of checks and balances, including independent courts and required parliamentary support for passing legislation.

The two scenarios are therefore roughly as similar as the arbitrary power of the owner of a privately held firm and the constrained power of a CEO of a publicly traded company.

> There is a huge difference between the rule of law in proper democracies ("Rechtsstaaten") and arbitrary political decisions in totalitarian states (such as Russia).

I'm tempted to agree. However, I did raise a specific counter-example. In that case, a "proper democracy" (Mossadegh was democratically elected and presumably used entirely legal means to nationalize APOC assets), and then the long arms (CIA, MI6) of another set of "proper democracies?" undertook a violent coup to take back the assets. I'm not aware of how/whether those "long arms" interacted with the large system of checks and balances that you mentioned.

I don’t know where you are in “the West” but here (Western Europe), selling a company is often subject to some kind of oversight, particularly something as critical as energy or with large companies. And artificial bankruptcies to evade contracts are actually fraud.

Not making any point about your example, which was indeed despicable behaviour.

> Is that illegal?

Under some circumstances if your company operates essential infrastructure, yes. (And always had been, btw.)

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