Bankrupt.Me-Not. Book of Problems

The businessman must get thoroughly immersed into the subject at hand to avoid being thrown out of the process ‘thanks’ to his own inactivity and stupidity, which will only accelerate the centrifugal forces stripping him of his assets. Apart from the bankruptcy law, this immersion must be into the court practice and, better yet, into the experience of those who have gone through bankruptcy firsthand. But you will have to learn as you go, because time will be extremely short. It is critical not to miss the moment when the ‘invaders’, who are skillful at taking away someone else’s property and at neutralizing the resistance of the current asset owner, cross the border.

If you do not want to trigger the centrifugal force of the 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 throw you out of your asset rights and empty your pockets faster than you can do anything sensible. 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

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. He was quite sure that all his actions were extremely sound and commercially legitimate. He would joke with his lawyer while waiting in the corridor and even tried to make a cheerful compliment to the investigator.

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, drew up a contract to that effect and began waiting for the goods to be delivered. But on their way back a dozen juggernauts with fresh tomatoes were held up at the border checkpoint because of the political conflict between Russia and Turkey. All transit was suddenly blocked, as Russia imposed a ban on Turkish vegetables, including tomatoes, yet the bank flatly refused to recognize it as force majeure.

Question: but what does criminal prosecution have to do with all this? 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. This effectively incriminated the businessman as someone who had tried to embezzle the money from the bank.

Investigators did not care a thing about the businessman’s motives for buying the tomatoes because they had a statement from the bank on their desk and needed to showcase 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 the routine evidence. He reckoned that after some shakedown, the businessman would find the money to pay back the loan one way or another, frantically trying to avoid criminal prosecution. Even sudden political disputes between countries can cause a business to collapse.

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