City: 100 Corporate Raiders on the Prowl.

(From The Moscow Times)

There are about 100 companies in the city "specializing in the unfriendly consumption of businesses" and they must learn to work in the interests of the city, the head of City Hall's economic security department, Alexander Korsak, said Thursday.

Exactly one year ago, City Hall became the first government at any level in Russia to create a department specifically to insure "economic security." Although the term is still unfamiliar to many, the need to plug the loopholes in the nation's nascent legal system is not, and at least 10 other regional governments have since created their own version of the department.

Summarizing a year's worth of work on Thursday, Korsak said his main job has been coordinating all of Moscow's various agencies and law enforcement bodies to create a "civilized market" in the city.

One area of particular interest to the department is determining the credibility of participants in the investment tenders frequently held by the city, he said.

In the past year, the department has barred seven companies from participating in city tenders because they submitted falsified documents.

Much of the department's time, however, is spent resolving conflicts between well-lawyered takeover specialists, among the biggest of which are Rosbuilding, Vash Finansovy Popechitel, Guta and Aton, according to Korsak. Some 70 meetings have been held with such companies, and as a result potential conflicts between shareholders and the social problems that usually arise from them were avoided at 30 enterprises.