A big Russian bank challenged in court an assignment of claim agreement of AGP’s client and several subsequent similar agreements made between third parties with respect to the same claims.
The bank’s strategy was based on the actively developing mechanism of challenging a deal by a person which is not a party to the deal outside of bankruptcy proceedings against a party to the deal.
The bank claimed that AGP’s client who had been for a long time in default of its obligations under the loan agreement with the bank for a substantial amount assigned its claims worth RUB 1.6 bln against its debtors to another foreign company.
The bank alleged that AGP’s client had no economic rationale for making the deal and made it just to cause harm to the bank, as allegedly was evidenced by the series of subsequent deals for assignment of the same claims between several foreign companies which were allegedly affiliated with each other. The bank regarded all the agreements as a single series of the deals aimed at withdrawal of assets from the realm of property relations of the bank’s debtor.
In substantiation of its interest, the bank referred to the possibility to satisfy the claim against AGP’s client by levying execution on the assigned claims, including the pledged property of one of the debtors of AGP’s client, which was worth RUB 1.2 bln according to the bank’s estimate.
The matter was aggravated by a great number of the deals governed i.a. by foreign laws and the lack of payments under the contested agreements.
AGP’s attorneys analyzed carefully the circumstances of making the deal by the client, including the standing and status of each of the defendants, the claims against whom had been assigned, and succeeded in proving the economic rationale for the client’s deal and in refuting the bank’s arguments about the affiliation of the defendants with each other. Furthermore, AGP’s attorneys proved that no interest of the bank had been violated and the bank had no right to claim invalidation of the deal of AGP’s client outside of bankruptcy proceedings.
“The bank attempted to apply the approaches and legal mechanisms actively used in bankruptcy proceedings according to the specifics of such matters. This matter is not a bankruptcy case and satisfaction of this claim by the court would have set a precedent which, in our opinion, might enable creditors to interfere with private-law relations of third parties (their debtors), challenge their deals outside of bankruptcy procedures”, Dmitri Yakushev said.
The matter was examined by the Moscow Arbitrazh (commercial) Court, the Ninth Arbitrazh (commercial) Court of Appeals and the Arbitrazh (commercial) Court for the Moscow District. The three courts fully accepted all the arguments submitted by AGP’s attorneys and rejected the arguments of the bank.
The matter was handled by AGP’s attorneys Alexey Gorodissky and Dmitri Yakushev and junior associate lawyer Yana Dovzhikova.
