Companies have started abusing the gaps in the bankruptcy legislation more often

The bank will keep the money that the borrowers have repaid to the bank less than six months before their bankruptcy. Anatoly Aksakov, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on the financial market, president of the Association of regional banks of Russia, will submit to the State Duma the respective amendments to the laws “On bankruptcy” and “On bankruptcy of credit organizatios” in May. Pursuant to the current legislation, if the borrower goes bankrupt within six months after the repayment (voluntary or enforced) of the loan to the bank, the trustee in bankruptcy returns those funds to the bankrupt estate.

Advocate Alexander Bolomatov, Partner of the Law Firm "YUST" confirms that the claims moved by trustees in bankruptcy to contest the debtors’ deals with the banks concerning the repayment of the debts have been growing exponentially in numbers. However, there is no precise statistics on the quantity of similar cases. Therefore, the situation may be studied on concrete examples. The practice on this matter is not uniform – some judgments benefit the banks, other judgments – the trustees. However, the lawyers questioned by Izvestia say that the trustees win more often.

For example, Sberbank was forced to return 700 million roubles to the bankrupt estate in the case of bankruptcy of Comfort-Service ICC as requested by the trustee in bankruptcy, and Vozrozhdenie Bank – 61 million roubles within the framework of the bankruptcy case of Arzamas milk plant. In those cases, the courts pointed out that the banks had been aware of the debtors’ insolvency and that the borrowers had had liabilities to other creditors before the credit repayment deals – therefore, there was preferential treatment of the banks’ claims as compared to other creditors.