Bankrupt.Me-Not. Book of Problems

If you do not want to trigger the centrifugal force of imminent bankruptcy and associated procedures, do not shout at every corner about your business troubles. Nor try to call to account those you consider culpable for your predicament, as it will only facilitate the centrifugal process that will deprive you of your asset rights and empty your pockets faster than you can sensibly do anything about. It’s not just money, it is also lack thereof that loves silence.

The centrifuge of events should be as far away as possible from the source of power that will initiate the bankruptcy process. Do not be the one to plug it in.

SECTION 6. CONTRIVED BANKRUPTCY

An old story says that if you call an honest woman a trollop in public, it is she who will have to vindicate herself, not the one who slandered her.

PROBLEM 12

He was quite sure that all his actions were sound and commercially legitimate. He joked with his lawyer while waiting in the corridor and even ventured to give the investigator a cheerful compliment. Given: a friend of mine who was first summoned to appear before an investigator could not have imagined in his wildest dreams that he would face criminal prosecution.

The whole affair seemed cut-and-dried: the businessman had used his line of credit to raise money for buying a regular shipment of tomatoes from Turkey. He had drawn up a contract to that effect and waited for the goods to be delivered. But on their return a dozen juggernauts, loaded with fresh tomatoes, were held up at the border due to political turmoil. Naturally, the tomatoes went bad, yet the bank flatly refused to recognize it as . force majeure

It turned out that a bank employee had decided to clamp down on the borrower by submitting a statement to the police about an illegally obtained loan, incriminating the businessman as someone who had tried to embezzle money from the bank. Question: but what does criminal prosecution have to do with all this?

The investigators didn’t care about the businessman’s motives for buying the tomatoes, because they had a statement from the bank on their desk and needed to demonstrate an improved crime detection rate no matter what. The banker intentionally went with extortion because he was trying to earn brownie points at work – the borrowed money had not been returned, and it was not his job to rummage through routine evidence. He reckoned that after some shakedown, the businessman, frantically trying to avoid criminal prosecution, would find the money to pay back the loan one way or another.

You must protect your assets by all means possible and use good lawyers to ensure that there are no undue criminal prosecutions. You should always expect to be reported to the police when bankruptcy proceedings start. An informer can put anything in their police statement. However, it will be up to you to vindicate yourself. Always remember the lady lawyer in Problem 7 who willfully stated in court that the debtor had borrowed a lot more than he actually had. It’s only you who can ensure the charges against you are dropped. Solution: