A friend asked me why it would take so long to process the car sale! Here's a partial description of the process. ALL the foreigners and ALL the Ethiopians I know who are involved in businesses here have similar stories to tell -- everyone speaks of the burden and corruption of the gv't bureaucracy, and many many many tell of treachery, sabotage, and embezzlement by former biz partners. Thank God there's no embezzling in my stories. I think that if you make it through this description, you deserve a prize. I hope you end up laughing. In the last few days I've gotten assurances from two Ethiopian friends that they will come with me to these offices and help me. It's good that there are two people, given how much time and aggravation will be involved. - - - - - The last thing I tried to do in the capital (last Thurs) was to renew my business license at the Ministry of Trade. I needed to do that as part of the process to sell the car. I had gotten a clearance from the Ministry of Revenue people to allow me to renew the biz license -- that had taken a couple of days. And why did it take so long ??? Because the Min of Rev people had lost their copies of a couple of payroll tax receipts THEY had issued to me. I had to find, copy, and submit my copies. Then I had to take and pickup various papers from different offices on different floors (no elevators) within the building. Employees in four (or was it five?) different groups had to sign and stamp (rubber) different papers and make computer entries. So on Thurs I was back at the Min of Trade. I had gotten the Min of Rev clearance as I've just described, plus everything else the Min of Trade people had told me to assemble when I'd gone there before. However when I got there on Thurs, they told me that I had to renew my Principle Business Registration License before I could renew my Business license. That requires some additional documentation. I think have it all. So, as I had hoped last week, I hope that when I next go to the capital, I'll get both licenses. That will allow me to continue with a very-multi step process, which is also required for selling the car. I can't get up the energy to describe that process in full, but here's basically what I wrote to my friend. "Will get a lot done" encompasses so many tasks it is mindboggling. - - - My hope is that I will get a lot done on this upcoming trip to AA, and will reach the stage when I can post and sign a set of corporate minutes with the Document Authorization and Registration office. Then other people, including my troublesome and recalcitrant old business partners, must also go there and sign. Assuming they do not refuse as they have in the past. Those minutes will allow me to change business partners (a day or so of work involved there), which will in turn allow me to post a second set of minutes that will allow me to reinstate my expired General Managership (expired bec the old partners refused to ratify the normal extension). After I am again GM (1-2 days work if it goes smoothly), I can post (1-2 days of work) the minutes that allow the car to be sold. Meanwhile, not being GM now, I cannot conduct any actions. Should the Doc Auth and Reg people not allow me to sign the minutes that allow the change of biz partners, then all is at a standstill. The hope is that those minutes were originally written Feb 14 2011, signed by all parties sometime the following summer (delays were on the part of the old biz partners) when I was still Gen Mgr. Those minutes were partly ratified by Doc Auth and Reg, but had then to go Min of Revenues for a clearance. Getting that clearance took 7 months. Now, the Doc Auth And Reg people have told me I must produce new, unsigned, copies of the minutes. So, about the old signatures, including mine, which were done when I was still GM -- are they totally invalidated, and am I now unable to complete the process that's taken so long and been so burdensome? My lawyer, Tamrat, was supposed to have contacted the old partners to set their signing process up and to feel them out about signing a preliminary minutes to reinstate me as GM to forestall the potential problem described in the preceding paragraph. After three weeks or so when he avoided me completely -- not returning texts, not answering calls, I was about to get someone else to call on their phone and then hand the phone to me, which had worked on another such occasion. However, this morning he texted me. He'd realized he no longer had a valid phone number to contact the old biz partners. I see, Tamrat, it took you three weeks to realize that? So you see some of the reasons that this is a 3rd-world country? [Posted in FML 7749]