Company officials at Ilim Pulp Enterprise, the largest forest products company in Russia, linked an aggressive search of their central offices by police to the frustration of corporate raiders whose hostile takeover attempt has been discredited by a recent series of pivotal court decisions. Some 50 armed men in black ski masks and police uniforms temporarily occupied and locked down Ilim's headquarters in downtown St Petersburg yesterday, rifling through company files, shutting down computer servers and hauling away box loads of business documents. The shakedown began at 10:00 am yesterday and ended today at 05:00 am. Police said company employees would be barred from entry to the building until noon today. "We see behind this unfortunate and crude act the disappointment of commercial opponents who have exhausted all other forms of attack on our company," said Ilim's spokesman Svyatoslav Bytchkov. "Our sense of the situation is that the powers of law enforcement authorities have been abused in the interests of private parties." Base Element, controlled by controversial Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska, has been trying to take control of key Ilim enterprises for over eighteen months. Deripaska aims to gain ascendancy in the paper and pulp market as he did in the aluminum sector in the 1990s. After a prolonged struggle in the Russian courts that culminated in a series of crucial decisions in favor of Ilim Pulp in July, Base Element's hostile takeover attempt has been decisively discredited. The search-and-seizure was led by investigator Sergei Bashkin, deputy head of the main directorate of the Interior Ministry for the Northwest Federal District. Bashkin entered the premises displaying an order issued by the ministry's office in the Irkutsk region, home to Ilim Pulp's Bratsk Paper Mill. The order authorized the official to search for the means and implements purportedly used to falsify a government letter, allegedly by Ilim, four months ago. It said that such a document had been used to disqualify the participation of the Federal Property Ministry in the Bratsk mill's April general shareholder meeting on the grounds that its representative lacked authority to vote on the government's shareholding. "The charge of falsifying a government document to begin with is, of course, false," said Bytchkov. "The use of dozens of armed men in ski masks to try to find non- existent means of creating it is almost beyond comment," he added. "It is just abuse." The Ilim spokesman said the armed raid was unrestrained and indiscriminate and resulted in the wholesale confiscation of the $1 billion company's financial and business files, which were largely irrelevant to the search order. He said that the attack on Ilim's headquarters recalled the aggressive tactics used by Base Element in its earlier attempts to forcibly occupy Ilim mills in both Siberia and northwestern Russia. "These types of raids have already become regrettably common in Russia today," said Bytchkov. "The damage they do to the image of Russian business and to the perception of the country's law-enforcement authorities is difficult to overstate." paperloop.com