Not Worth the Paper They Are Written On…

Yulia Latynina expresses her regret that a seemingly merit-less lawsuit brought by Michael Cherney against Oleg Deripaska of Rusal is accepted by a London court due to the fact that there are doubts about the functioning of the Russian legal system:

At the same time as these events were unfolding, the London court agreed to hear the claims of businessman Michael Cherney against oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Cherney accused Deripaska, his former business partner, of failing to pay the full price for his shares in Russian Aluminum. I don’t want to guess the outcome, but I think Cherney’s claims aren’t worth the paper they were written on. Cherney’s industrial empire, in which Deripaska once participated, was built upon extremely informal connections between the various players. The ownership documents Cherney has in his possession, and which both he and Deripaska have signed, are quite typical for such shady transactions — that is, they might carry some validity in the criminal world, but not in a British court of law. Nonetheless, the British court agreed to hear Cherney’s case on the rationale that he was unable to obtain justice in Russia. It is truly a sad testament to the current state of affairs when a London court considers Russia’s reputation as being worse than Cherney’s.