Protection of bankers by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. Restrictions on bringing to subsidiary liability. Arbitrage practice.
The Judicial Collegium for Economic Cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation decided to limit the possibility of bringing top managers and owners of bankrupt credit institutions to subsidiary liability. According to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, serious grounds are needed for this, so there is a change in judicial practice, because recently cases of attracting controlling persons to subsidies have become widespread.
Probably the Supreme Court intends to correct the frankly pro-creditor position of the courts and take into account the interests of both parties. Now the Deposit Insurance Agency will need to make some efforts to prove the fault of the defendant bankers, their influence and negative consequences for the organization should be significant. However, in practice, any easing is fraught with abuses, in this case, they are not excluded on the part of managers and bank owners.
Such a landmark decision was made by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in the case of bringing the former management of Baltika Bank to subsidiary liability. The judicial review of the application for declaring the credit organization insolvent lasted more than five years, in the framework of this case, the bankruptcy trustee tried to place part of the blame for the bank's bankruptcy on its managers.
The requirement to bring to subsidiary liability in the amount of 11 billion rubles was justified quite traditionally for judicial practice: managers were charged with making dubious and unprofitable transactions, leading to the formation of bad debts.
The bankruptcy creditor revealed, inter alia, that management made decisions to issue funds without liquid collateral, to exchange claims for “blank” bills, etc. According to these requirements for 3 billion rubles, the arbitration court of first instance assigned a subsidy to three managers, and an appeal with a cassation brought two more to responsibility. These latter appealed against the court rulings due to lack of proof of their guilt (transactions were concluded without their approval or after they left the bank). As a result, it came to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, which canceled the decision to involve the last two managers in the subsidy and extremely negatively assessed the work of their colleagues.
The Supreme Court pointed out that it is important to take into account not only the role and significance of the official in the company, but also the significance of the consequences of his actions, whether the top manager was the initiator of the transaction and its potential beneficiary. In itself, the unprofitability of the transaction cannot serve as a basis for a subsidy. In addition, the fact of compliance with corporate approval rules excludes liability.
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