A Russian well-off person provided financing before the crisis, in the late 1990s in Russia, for developing an enterprise in the field of trading in securities, and the venture failed.
After recovering from the crisis, this well-off asked for assistance in recovering the money that he had provided for the venture, because the failure of the venture was a result, he argued, of misleading representations and deception. The problem was that besides the story that he provided and some of the names of the people involved, he had no proof and/or no document to support his claim.
At the first stage, a private investigator was hired to gather information on the people involved, and he was unable to bring documents or other information to serve as a basis for filing a claim either.
Accordingly, by exploiting weaknesses of some of the people involved, a legal proceeding started, first outside of court and afterward by filing a claim against a wide spectrum of parties with the aim of employing a “divide and conquer” action.
This action was intended to uncover documents and proof, through the preliminary proceedings in the case.
These documents and proofs were used for securing a significant judgment against the litigants that the Russian well-off person wanted to punish.
This strategy was employed after the Russian well-off person agreed that the move could require significant financing in the middle, meaning that losing the case against the “peripheral” defendants, i.e., those that had been added to the claim as leverage for securing the documents and proof for managing the case.
The “net” result of cleaning the expenses and loss against the “peripheral” defendants was significantly greater.