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“Should kidnap victims pay their debts? That, roughly, is the question facing Estonia, which issued £700,000 ($3.4m) and $4m in 40-year bonds in 1927, but was then annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. Most investors swallowed their losses. But not William Hardison, a Florida-based businessman, who holds around $90,000-worth of the septuagenarian paper.  Estonia’s booming, debt-free economy is one of the most successful in the ex-communist world. But the situation with Estonia’s kidnapper is rather different. Russia took on the Soviet Union’s assets and liabilities in 1991, and has since bargained hard to get out of paying the latter.”

http://www.economist.com/node/426616