Q&A: Selling Corporations
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Selling Corporations
Question
I haven’t seen this in the book, but there are well-known opinions that stealing from an entity that is not a person, such as the state, is not forbidden. Is it possible to close this loophole by selling all the state’s assets and authority, etc., to some individual? (And then any entity that wants people not to steal from it can go ahead and make a proper halakhically valid sale.)
Answer
There is such a thing as stealing from the public, and a state is an institution that represents the public. And if you sell the assets to a private individual, then they belong to him and not to the state.