
Help the Moldovan company RITLabs to survive - rhabarba
http://pastebin.com/SLjDrQN1
======
rdtsc
That is sad to hear.

As a rule, when Moldova is in the news, it is rarely good news.

> We think it is a deliberate attempt to destroy our company.

That would probably be true. Knowing how things work there.

This is the country which had $1B stolen from it. Not from a company, but from
the country! Sounds too crazy to be true? Nope, it is true in Moldova.

[http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/07/news/economy/moldova-
stolen-...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/07/news/economy/moldova-stolen-
billion/)

That is a whooping 12% of its GDP. Imagine someone walking away with $2T away
from US.

On the other hand, if you are a corrupt criminal, Moldova is a nice place to
hang out. You can make your own laws, pay your way out of anything. Corruption
attracts corruption.

EDIT: This is also a country were when I lived there, someone put a bomb under
the door of someone they don't like in a 5 story apartment building. I was in
the evening on the phone with someone and the whole building shook, thought it
was an earthquake. Nope, apartment building next door was bombed. The part of
the roof and the part of the wall was missing. Could see people's furniture
inside and all after the dust settled. It was miracle nobody died.

~~~
mtgx
> Imagine someone walking away with $2T away from US.

Not so hard to imagine:

[https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/want-cut-
govern...](https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/want-cut-government-
waste-8-5-trillion-pentagon-142321339.html)

Moldova's $1 billion probably got "lost" in a similar way - corruption that
doesn't appear in the books.

~~~
rdtsc
At least criminality in Moldova can be agile ;-) you don't need a whole
military contractor company to steal billions from taxpayers to say build
"infrastructure" in Iraq or Afghanistan. Alone or with a few accomplices can
efficiently take the money and cut out all the fakery in between.

~~~
TeMPOraL
So it seems Moldova offers a lesson for startups on how to disrupt corruption
industry. It's time for the dinosaurs of military-industrial complex to shake
in fear as the agile lean Bribe-as-a-Service companies take their marketshare.
;).

------
trhway
kind of surrealism :

[https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritlabs](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritlabs)

"В 2013 году фирма удостоилась звания «Сознательный налогоплательщик»[4],
учрежденного Главной Государственной Налоговой Инспекцией Республики Молдова."

translation:

"In 2013 the company was awarded the title "Conscious Taxpayer" by the Moldova
State Tax Agency (ie. like IRS) "

and according to this
[http://logos.press.md/node/38228](http://logos.press.md/node/38228) the
company was also given "Certificate of Trust" along with the title which meant
official guarantee of absence of tax audits for the 2 years following that.

Edit: After spending some time Google-ing it seems just a simple case of
extortion by the team consisting of a local police inspector, prosecutor and a
judge, i.e. it looks like RitLabs, despite their good taxpayer status, has
still missed (and seems to be stubbornly refusing) to pay some local "tax" :)

~~~
rhabarba
Depends.

Here's the full story:

[http://pastebin.com/gKqTcH4j](http://pastebin.com/gKqTcH4j)

~~~
jpatokal
Why is this all in pastebins? As opposed to company website, personal blog,
Kickstarter, something even vaguely reputable...?

~~~
vhbit
Looks like those messages are copied from mailing lists (TBBETA and/or TBUDL).
Considering The Bat! was the most popular product[1] and its users were email
addicted those mailing lists are the best way to reach their users directly.

I've seen publications in local[2] "press" about the case although it focuses
only on corruption and there is no mention of internal company's politics
there.

[1] at time I worked there it was the only source of revenue, not sure if any
other product take off since

[2] yep, I'm in Moldova

------
eistrati
I'm originally from Moldova and it's very sad to read yet another abuse story
from Moldovan authorities :( Communist roots are so deep, not even Vlad
Dracula will be able to fix it.

Will help as much as I can, but a piece of advice to Ritlab team - Consider
moving your company outside of Moldova and afterwards write a "Thank You"
letter ;)

------
ommunist
oh, heck, these are guys behind TheBat email client snd FAR. Some of the most
useful Win progs I ever seen before I falled to *nix.

~~~
leonardinius
Not FAR. It was Eugene Roshal[1]

[1]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Roshal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Roshal)

~~~
ommunist
ah, sorry, that was DOS Navigator, also very useful, it even had trash bin!

------
restalis
I'm sympathetic with their plea, but I don't quite understand this: "There is
no such a law in Moldova to permit for a Moldovan court to allow an ex parte
suspension of a bank account. But this law was violated in case of Ritlabs,
SRL." How can an inexistent law be violated?

