A.T. Legal provided support for participation of Seliger Park LLC, a company affiliated with Absolut Bank and Blagosostoyanie NPF JSC, in the bankruptcy case of Dmitrovka LLC.
The bank pledged real estate, which was foreclosed extrajudicially: through a chain of transactions the real estate was transferred into the ownership of Seliger Park LLC, with simultaneous repayment of Dmitrovka LLC's pledge obligations to the bank.
However, the debtor's minority bankruptcy creditors Sberbank and Trust Bank were dissatisfied with the failure to include the said property into the bankruptcy estate. They initiated legal proceedings to return the real estate to the bankruptcy estate and reclaim it from its rightful owner. Initially, the courts saw no grounds to satisfy the claims, but later the second instance courts of appellate and cassation instances satisfied the claims, changing the subject and the grounds of the claim and reclaiming the property formerly owned by the debtor from the present owner (Seliger Park LLC) who had not even been invited to join the case as a co-defendant. Thus, Seliger Park LLC lost the legally acquired property without any compensation.
A.T. Legal prepared a cassation appeal to the RF Supreme Court. Special attention was drawn to the good faith actions of Absolut Bank and Seliger Park LLC, to the fact that the bank had not been involved in the standalone dispute and that, had other creditors of the debtor made claims against it, the bank would have definitely satisfied a legitimate and justified part of them. Besides, the claim affirms that the courts applied such consequences of nullity, which not only failed to restore the pre-transaction state, but also resulted in unjust enrichment of the Debtor and the claimants at the expense of Absolut Bank, since the court ordered to return the disputed property to the bankruptcy estate without any encumbrance existing before the transaction and without restoration of the pledge creditor's rights to Absolut Bank. The real estate was withdrawn from the legal possession of Seliger Park LLC without any reimbursement of its value.
The higher court agreed with the arguments of the cassationists and the case was returned to the trial court for reconsideration. As a result, at the third round of consideration of the dispute, the trial court dismissed the claims of Sberbank and Trust Bank.
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