A heated takeover battle for lucrative pulp and paper assets has broken out in Russia, prompting scenes reminiscent of the darkest days of the lawless 1990s. Two of the country\'s most feared oligarchs have joined forces to wrest control of OAO Ilim Pulp, owner of the country\'s three largest integrated paper mills, from its current management. Last week there was a tense stand-off at one of Ilim\'s largest mills after an intimidating 50-strong armed detachment demanded access. The spat is an ugly reminder of what is still reality in Russian business circles despite the glossy image projected outward by president Vladimir Putin and, increasingly, Russia\'s largest companies. Ilim\'s predicament "presents a prime test case for the Russian government to demonstrate its ability and commitment to bring under control...abuse of the judicial system," the company\'s legal advisers Coudert Brothers said in a statement Monday. Ilim Pulp, spooked by the unwelcome delegation, has responded by not only appealing to Putin personally but also enlisting the international press and New York-based law firm Coudert Brothers. Ilim claims that companies linked to Siberian Aluminum, one of the pillars of oligarch Oleg Deripaska\'s business empire, are pressing, by force, a claim to 61% of the shares in Ilim Pulp granted through court orders which it says are invalid. Deripaska\'s accumulation of aluminum assets in the 1990s was dogged by similar allegations. Svyatoslav Bytchkov, a spokesman for Ilim Pulp, describes SibAl\'s legal claim to the Kotlas mill as follows: An unnamed minority hareholder filed suit against Ilim in a court in the distant region of Kemerovo, on the grounds that it failed to fulfill investment pledges when assuming control of Kotlas. The court, without notifying Ilim of the hearing, found for the plaintiff and ordered Ilim to pay 3 billion rubles ($1=RUB31.55) to Kotlas. Almost immediately, it instructed the registrar of Ilim\'s shares to sequester enough shares to cover the award. The registrar company, which belonged to another oligarch, Vladimir Kogan, valued and sold the shares two days later to a company also controlled by Kogan. Kogan couldn\'t be reached for comment Monday. Events appear to be coming to a head just as one of the most important of Putin\'s legislative reforms comes into force. One of the key aims of the Administrative Procedural Codex, which becomes effective this week, was to ensure that commercial disputes can only be settled by courts of arbitrage in the presence of both parties, and would put an end to procedures such as the one described. That deadline appears to have forced the hand of the opposing faction, hurrying it into mistakes. Bytchkov says that the delegation which tried to browbeat its way into Kotlas last week did so on the strength of an unsigned, nstamped document on the letterhead of a local court in Makhachkala in the even more remote Caspian republic of Dagestan, accompanied by a man claiming to be from the Justice Ministry but who failed to present any proof of identification. Bytchkov says the delegation was headed by Arkady Sarkissian, senator for the Republic of Khakasia and a board member of both SibAl and its automaking subsidiary Gorky Auto Factories, or GAZ. Questions directed to Sarkissian through SibAl and GAZ hadn\'t received a reply at the time of writing.