That's probably true but the time-frame within which you're required to notify them might be generous.  You're generally required to notify corporate regulators if you cease trading as well, even if you don't dissolve the company, but many such requirements aren't immediate.

It's absolutely possible for different parties to obtain legal advice from different lawyers and for all the lawyers involved to be wrong.  As a practical matter, the question really comes down to whether the best interests of the company (which exists as a legal entity in its own right), its creditors and its shareholders were served by the actions taken.  Ideals like not wanting to see the magazine die may have motivated owners new and old but they're not especially relevant to whether the actions taken were the best of the available options at the time or whether people lived up to their legal responsibilities.

It's a false dichotomy to present this as one side being right and one side being wrong.  It's possible that both sides have behaved wrongly.

One thing's for certain - if this does get litigated the only winners will be the lawyers.

The majority of start-ups fail.  It's become standard practice around here to cry "scam" any time users lose money, but plenty of those losses can be attributed as much to incompetence as they can to outright fraud.

From what's been posted no-one is talking about the Ltd company having been dissolved, although that would be the logical next step after all creditors have been paid, all claims settled and any surplus paid to shareholders.   It is the express duty of directors to prevent a company from trading while insolvent, even if that requires selling assets (and a director paying himself while leaving the company unable to pay other creditors is certainly a questionable action).  From what we've been told, following the resignation of Vladimir and his wife Mihai was the sole remaining director which would mean that the legal responsibility to avoid insolvent trading rested on him.

You can certainly argue that it would have been nice if all of the shareholders were consulted about the decision to sell assets, but under the circumstances it might not have been legally required given the statutory obligations to which a director is subject.

While the potential for conflicts of interest is enormous when self-dealing is involved, it doesn't always affect other shareholders in a negative manner - which is why each case needs to be looked at on its merits.  If BitTalk Media was unable to pay its creditors following the resignations of Vladimir and his wife, then it had limited options for continuing to trade and there were few options for providing any return to shareholders.

I don't think that anyone has handled this situation impeccably, but pragmatic solutions are rarely ideal ones.   This situation didn't arise suddenly and there were plenty of opportunities along the way for power plays which would negatively affect the value of the company to be avoided.

You must have half the board on ignore by now if those are your criteria.   

A "write-off" is an accounting measure which takes bad debt off your books.  Writing off bad or doubtful debt doesn't affect your right to pursue recovery of that debt legally (writing off debt can have tax implications though, both for the creditor and the debtor) although that decision should also be made on purely economic grounds too (both the financial cost and the investment of time involved in pursuing recovery need to be balanced against the likelihood of recovering the original amount owed plus those costs). 

You could argue that there's some value in pursuing an unenforceable judgement purely to fuck up someone's credit rating, but a business that takes debt so personally probably isn't going to survive long-term.

So you became a majority shareholder without any advice to the other shareholders that the outstanding shares had been sold?  That's...questionable to say the least.

Because you're clearly not house-trained yet or you'd know that all-caps thread titles with exclamation marks belong on AOL.

It's not really that surprising.  This forum is no longer seen as a reliable barometer for gauging the trustworthiness of Bitcoin services so people have become more willing to take a chance on services which have never been mentioned here.  People have been wanting an .onion exchange for a long time and don't necessarily perceive it as any more risky than trusting more visible exchanges.

The problem isn't a lack of labels.  The problem is establishing a reputation system which has any kind of credibility/validity.

Equally, if other shareholders of BitTalk Media were disadvantaged by decisions made by Vladimir and his wife in their capacity as directors after Matthew's departure, it could bite them.

I'm not sure that either side in this particular squabble stands to benefit by airing their conflicts in the court of public opinion.

It's Tony from BitPay who is one of the new owners.

The extent to which minor share-holders were excluded from the process would probably be clearer if Vladimir disclosed the extent of his own and his wife's holdings - given that it's claimed 75% of shareholders accepted the proposal how much of the remaining 25% was controlled by Vladimir and his wife is extremely relevant to whether "minority shareholders" were "defrauded".

As theymos said elsewhere, Bitcoin is backed by drama.

http://dramatalk.org/

Whether any of the shareholders - directors or otherwise - should have been receiving payment from the company for their services at all is an interesting topic in itself.

Time and again over the last year and a half we've seen the dangers of rushing into business with people you don't know illustrated, and especially the dangers of people not getting independent legal advice before forming partnerships/companies.  Enthusiasm is great, but not when it over-comes commonsense and that seems to be something which has happened repeatedly.

I wonder if mummy and daddy are going to cough up the money for the next three months of rent or whether another "mystery cheque" will arrive.  We can't expect dank to worry about things like rent when he has a music festival to organise and needs funds to get to California.

I doubt anyone's going to be suing for defamation.  It's unbelievably expensive to pursue defamation action, takes years to litigate, and awards tend to be inadequate even when you've sustained legitimate damages, especially when there are no "deep pockets" defendants involved.  You're not going to find a lawyer willing to take a defamation case on contingency.  Even establishing jurisdiction can be difficult in defamation cases which involve parties in different locations.

Because all these artists and their managers, plus the sound and lighting suppliers and operators, plus the DJs, plus the suppliers of food, water and toilets are all going to commit without even knowing the location of the venue.  Especially for an event which is scheduled for a few days before Christmas.  Because it's not likely anyone needs to organise transport, accommodation or moving their gear.

In many jurisdictions it's also governed by legislation related to companies as well - this was an actual company, not one of many Bitcoin enterprises which present themselves as companies but aren't.

This isn't a new drama.  It's been going on behind the scenes for months.  I'm not sure about the wisdom of the parties involved making it public, but that horse has already bolted now.

Me too.  It raises the interesting question of whether the scammer tag is an appropriate response to internal conflicts within private companies.  I guess that Nefario being given the scammer tag for acting against the wishes of some of the other shareholders set something of a precedent.

Are you forgetting that users on this board were calling for Matthew to be stripped of his shares in BM following the whole bet debacle?  Regardless of what people think of Vladmir's actions, let's not pretend that people didn't want Matthew punished by pretty much any means, even if by extension it compromised the interests of other BM shareholders.  What happened at BM did not happen in a vacuum and a lot of the behind the scenes machinations weren't exactly secret even while they were occurring, but people were pissed at Matthew while they were happening and didn't care much about the bigger picture.

Bitcoin is the currency of whoever wants to use it, to be used however they see fit.  It doesn't "belong" to anyone.