> "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?
> 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 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?
> 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.
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?