If one considers his or her business to be untouchable, then this article might be definitely not for this type of the person.

Such materials are of interest only for people who objectively look at market trends and understand the simple dependence: the more successful the business becomes, the more there will be people who will seek to destroy or seize it. Besides, the purpose in such cases justifies the means.

The history of an illegal takeover is deeply rooted in European history. In the XVI century raiders were called pirates, who were issued a license by monarchs to rob and wreck merchant and military vessels of other adversary countries. Over the time, this phenomenon spread to the land. Today, despite international conventions, raidership is widespread in different parts of the world and therefore deserves special attention of security professionals and company executives who do not want to lose everything built and acquired over many years of a business activity.

In the frameworks of the given article, we do not set ourselves the task of providing a comprehensive answer about how to protect your business from illegal takeover, rather it is the beginning of the acquaintance with an issue itself. The final article in the series of this topic will be a description of the fundamental structure of the technical capabilities of “the Agra technology” developed by the experts of the APSI Academy. By means of this technology, the security of any system can be built in a way that illegal takeover becomes unprofitable for competitors and ill-wishers. In the first article, we will consider the relevance of illegal takeovers in current Eastern Europe.

According to the National Anti-Corruption Committee, annually in the Russian Federation there are up to 700 thousand illegal takeovers. The number of criminal cases in connection with the commission of unlawful acts is limited to 10% of the total number of precedents, with only a few ones reaching the court. In 2015 there was a scandal in Slovakia around an illegal takeover of the insurance company NOVIS Poisťovňa a.s., 40% shares of which belonged to the British company United Capital PLC until August 2014. On average, on the territory of Ukraine there are about 3000 illegal takeovers every year. At the same time, according to the Minister of Justice for State Registration Pavel Moroz in the 90% of cases these illegal actions end in favor of criminals.

One of the most striking examples of the illegal takeover in recent years in Ukraine, you may consider an illegal takeover of the Amstor group of companies. According to the media, there were armed men bursting into Amstor’s supermarkets across the whole Ukraine, who called themselves to be representatives of a new management, allegedly the Smart Holding company. Before that there was a legal attack: by means of forged documents, with the assistance of employees of the state registration service, the Amstor company founders were illegally amended. Raiders captured not only the premises, server, but also the accounts of the company.

The statistics of the US and Western Europe in this respect is no less significant, however, unlike the countries of Eastern Europe, in Western sources you will most often have to deal with the notion of “unfriendly absorption.” Obviously, the statistics clearly indicate towards the urgency of the problem and the lack of effective integrated methods for solving the given issue. The option of corrupting officials to solve this type of the problems has a short-term effect at the best scenario, but it is more frequent when things end for a business with even a greater loss and with possible criminal consequences.

In the following articles we are going to continue considering the problems of raider seizures, trends, methods of action and will gradually approach the consideration of the elements of “the Agra technology”.