sydneysider- i agree with your concerns, it was the major one...

sydneysider- i agree with your concerns, it was the major one for me
before buying in (that and, much as folks say "don't trust what you
read on HC") the many posters here who considered it to be a big takedown and
snake oil.

the russian tradition of reiderstvo "raiding" is alive and well, and
yes ivcius, i can see that would have been a decent part of why vagif and his scientists
went offshore to commercialise their research. that the
initial factory is in tomsk, admittedly near lots of pines (but then
so much of russia would be) but also in an economically depressed
area and getting the local government onside is a big plus for me. if
the factory gets "raided", the new owners would have production but
not the intellectual property. i believe solagran is even fragmenting
the production (geographically and amongst different subsidiaries) with
insurance against this in mind.

the fact that the directors and scientists are so mad keen to get back
into as many shares as they can lay their hands to gives me pretty
much enough reason to believe the solagran story is not BS. future
production is expected to diversify outside russia, i believe to
NW USA and scandinavia.

the major sovereign risk with russia, and every other country with
socialised medicine, is that their version of the PBS can dictate what
the final price they will pay is. i believe that competitor products
are far more expensive than $1k a course, so there should be plenty of
wriggle room on price. but solagran really needs russia (with its
150m population of massive drinkers), pretty much as much as
russia needs something like ropren to arrest the decline in average
male life expectancy (it is now at 59 years- lower than bangladesh, pretty much because of alcoholism)