11. Have a battalion of armed bodyguards?

A little bit on that Alexander Mamut guy: http://rumafia.net/en/dosje/12 . One of the "7 banker" group.

He is the one who racketeered Euroset into selling itself at 990% discount.

Evroset was the largest retail network in Russia, built from scratch buy a man with a lot of talent, but no mafia connections. Alexander Chichvarkin was pretty much the most renowned businessman of his generation in Russia.

Chichvarkin fled to UK, and left a director to be his proxy.

They used the same tactic — director detained, and offered a trade at gunpoint. The director however managed to escape the capture too. In this case, after his bodyguards made a scuffle with police in his office.

Chichvarkin is Evgeny, not Alexander.

0. Don’t do business in Russia

I would use the same approach for setting up a business in the US. Additionally I would require some huge insurance to protect myself from frivolous lawsuits.

As an outside business you want no servers in the US or use US dollars in any form as you may end up being sanctioned or worse extradited for things that are not illegal in your country.

> as you may end up being sanctioned or worse extradited for things that are not illegal in your country

You're of course conflating problems that are very common in Russia (hyper corruption, few human rights, zero business law protection, no functioning independent judicial system) with problems (the need for huge insurance, extradition, getting sanctioned) that are rare in the monster size $22 trillion US economy filled with millions of businesses.

List of countries currently meaningfully sanctioned by the US: Russia, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Syria

I certainly hope you don't live in North Korea while commenting freely on Hacker News (which is, naturally, located in the US).

Not a bad idea for any company in any country, the way laws surrounding tech are going.

Not sure if your comment is trolling or just due to ignorance, but https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky

Not trolling... if they outlaw encryption, as most governments want to do, it will require creative org structures.

Australian checking in - and I'm not trolling either: I can just as easily read that 10-point list off for Australia.

Which companies were taken over illegally by organized groups in Australia?

Because the OP's list was likely referring to a very different reality than what you imagine: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/jun/24/russia.interna...

> Which companies were taken over illegally by organized groups in Australia?

That kind of stuff does happen in Australia too, it's not just widely known or reported on.

A good friend - (now-ex) business owner - several years ago had her company taken from her at gun point. With nothing to be done about it ("or else") by people who the police won't fk with.

Ermm, you may wanna pay more attention to the companies being granted native-title claims on the mineral-rich chunks of land all over the country ..

I think the last one pretty much covers it.

That could happen in any country. That's a corporate dispute.

Rambler sold their NGINX "copyright rights" to a shady law firm (Lynwood Investments CY Ltd).

Anything can happen anywhere, but it's the height of naivety to call the general international risk of this of this (government takeover of your shit) happening anywhere vs Russia comparable. It's way more likely to happen in russia and anyone who's worked there can tell you that.

Perhaps.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky

That's not a corporate displute. It's probable cause in criminal law. Ngnix founders are already detained btw.

They are currently being interrogated, not detained.

If you can't walk away from an interrogation, you've been detained.

Maximum continuous time for an interrogation in Russia - 4 hours, after which there should be a pause of at least an hour. Maximum total time is 8 hours within a single day.

Maximum time for a detention is 48 hours until the court's decision. The difference is how much time one would have to actively prepare his defence themselves, not via advocates.

You could use those 'rules' instead of toilet paper - not even half a year ago a ton of people were detained longer and without proper accommodations like food, water and place to sleep. Nothing happened afterwards, maybe in a couple years un human rights council will make government give those people some money, but that's it.

It works like this: you detain a person for 48 hours, then release him and when he is at the exit, detain him once more. Repeat as needed. Probably you would need to find another formal reason for a detainment (I'm not sure though), but seems it is not very difficult. They did something like just this summer, when protests was going against infringements with voting.

There was police raid in the office. After that founders were captured and brought to interrogation. If it's not "detained" then I don't know what any other meaning this word may have.

They were released and are at their homes now.

Perhaps not as often or quite so capriciously