Mark getty may have just kissed $175 million good-bye. Four years ago an investment vehicle owned by the famous clan acquired a 62% stake in an oil and gas company owned by a subsidiary of Russian giant Gazprom. But when the family tried to sell the stake last year, Getty claims, these powerful Russian companies interfered with the deal and cast doubt on the validity of the licenses to produce oil. In March he filed legal complaints in London and New York. But win or lose, J. Paul's grandson is savvy enough to know he may never see his money again. "If you ever do win a lawsuit with claims on Russian assets, collection is a really big issue," he says from the London office of his graphics firm, Getty Images. "You may get your money. But you have to go Getty's concerns are emblematic of a sad fact of international investment: The globe may be shrinking as a place to do business, but standards for adjudication and recourse are still worlds apart. While American companies complain about the domestic practice of "hometowning"―dragging a corporate defendant to some smaill-town courthouse with plaintiff-friendly juries―that's nothing compared with what, investors face in emerging markets with ill-formed legal systems and rampant corruption. Even after winning a trial, settlement or arbitration hearing, investors in the toughest corners of the world spend small for-tunes paying lawyers and investigators to hunt down assets and corral governments and companies into paying their debts.
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