Sergei Bakeshin has commented on the situation regarding the inclusion in the register of creditors of claims against an insolvent machine-building plant

The Commercial Court of St Petersburg and the Leningrad Region initiated insolvency proceedings against a plant, which produces machine-building equipment for the gas and petrochemical industries, including Gazprom. Since 2017, a controlling stake in the plant has been owned by the Russian division of the Grossmann engineering group – Grossmann Rus LLC. In 2017-2019, the plant was used a guarantee for loans to Grossmann Rus from Sberbank. As part of the insolvency case, Grossmann Rus and Sberbank are the largest creditors of plant and each is trying to recover 2 billion roubles from the debtor; however, today the bank has managed to be entered onto the register of creditors, whereas Grossman Rus has not.

The court recognised that the plant owes 1.6 billion roubles to the bank. As explained to Delovoy Peterburg by the Head of the Dispute Resolution and Insolvency practice at Maxima Legal, Sergei Bakeshin, this debt will need to be repaid before claims from other creditors can be included in the register.

According to Sergei, the commercial court was especially strict with the requirements of Grossmann Rus. “Refusals to include in the register of creditors’ claims artificially created debts affiliated with the debtor are quite common. But in this case, the court applied not even elevated, but inflated standards of evidence” said Sergei. At the same time, the commercial court could not completely deny Grossmann Rus, but lower the priority of its claims.

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