These things are never simple and you have to look at them case by case. I used to work for a large Canadian mining company that also had operations in developing countries. In one case for about 12-15 years after starting a fairly large mining operation, the Canadian company never reported any profits and never paid taxes in that country. They ofcourse employed people etc, but did not pay taxes. The local government claimed that they were doing funny accounting (including financing, head office, R&D expences etc as well as reporting low sales prices of the metal products to off-set profits). One day they decided to act and basically prevented the Canadian company to export anything by closing the port. In the end a deal was made, the selling price was the LME price the day of shippment from the country and the cost was calculated using a mathematical formula including price of oil, labor rates, etc. The difference was taxable profit, end of story.

Was this fair, probably yes. We have to remember that huge multi-national cooperations have huge legal and accounting departments filled with skilled people with the main job to make the company as profitable as possible.  In many cases small developing countries are no match for these companies in terms of international business and accounting, and the only way they can fight back is by drastic actions.

I lost money and sold at a pretty big loss my Crystallex shares. Even if given the required permits, I think that the rules will be stacked in such a way that Crystallex will barely make any profit and Chavez will collect the difference. Is this fair, I don't think so. On the other hand, look at NewFoundland, they are forcing Inco to process the Voisey's Bay ore there instead of shipping it to Sudbury or Thompson. Is this fair?