Subsidiary Liability

Refusal to recover damages, bring to subsidiary liability the controlling persons of the debtor (former CEO of the company). St. Petersburg.

I met interesting material in RBC (https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5c7d20a39a79477ed013f2ef).

Recently, the St. Petersburg Arbitration Court dismissed the claim of Alexei Belokopyt, the bankruptcy trustee of Transaero. He intended to recover 11.3 million rubles from Olga Pleshakova, the former CEO of the company. Transaero was declared bankrupt in 2017, with debts of 250 billion rubles, the company could no longer carry out its activities. Belokopy requested that the lease transaction made between 2013 and 2014 be declared invalid, since he considered that this transaction caused damage to other creditors.

In addition to creditors, the airline has debts to its former employees. A criminal case is underway against the company's executives on the fact of non-payment of wages to employees. In total, the company owes wages to more than seven thousand employees, and the total amount of wage debt exceeds 600 million rubles. One of the defendants in the case, Alexander Burdin, the former general director of Transaero, fled from the investigation and was put on the international wanted list.

According to the results of the audit, the problems with the airline began in 2012, but this was not documented. There were also signs of deliberate introduction of the company into bankruptcy, the financial statements did not correspond to reality. In fact, since this year the company has existed only at the expense of borrowed funds, instead of going to court to declare itself bankrupt, as it should be. As a result of the monitoring procedure, the value of the assets decreased significantly, the property belonging to the company was seized, but the value is not more than 500 million rubles, which does not cover the company's debts.

In the past, Transaero was the largest private air carrier, many of the passengers were upset when they learned about the termination of the company. Despite numerous claims by passengers against the airline regarding canceled flights, they expressed hope on the forums for the resumption of Transaero flights. But all the property of the carrier goes under the hammer, and experts unanimously say that the company is no longer able to return to operation.

Lawyer comment:

It is no longer a secret for anyone that the number of cases on bringing to subsidiary liability is increasing from year to year. Among them, the percentage of satisfaction of the requirements for bringing to responsibility is also increasing. Nevertheless, in this case, the CDL managed to prove its own innocence, which perfectly demonstrates that with active protection, a clear understanding of its own functionality and dependence with the ensuing consequences, there are chances. However, do all CDLs understand this and implement it at the right time?

March 11, 2019

David Glickstein

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