The Rigases, who kept their shares, took corporate assets for personal use, and will now spend a long time in prison.

The Reagan Administration also wants to let employers take "excess assets" from a pension plan and use the money to buy health insurance for retirees.

Civil liberties groups and defense lawyers have long maintained that the existing rules make it too easy for the Government to take assets.

"The Korean partners complain the Americans are going to take valuable assets at far below equity."

Plunder continued until the early summer of 1946, when the Soviet policy changed from taking Austrian assets to managing them for a profit.

They took assets on to their books assuming they would sell them at a profit shortly afterwards.

"It is about taking existing economic assets out of the hands of Canadians."

The act of taking assets into the private sector is referred to as privatization.

The "spin-out" company takes assets, intellectual property, technology, and/or existing products from the parent organization.

"He took giant assets for free," Putin said of Potanin.