Sergei Bakeshin commented for Delovoy Petersburg on the bankruptcy of the son of the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg and ex-billionaire Alexey Govorunov

The Commercial Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region has ruled on the lawsuit filed by R.E.D. LLC against Alexey Govorunov, the son of the former vice-governor of St. Petersburg, who used to be included in Delovoy Petersburg’s Billionaires Rating with a fortune of RUB 3.3 bn. Govorunov was declared bankrupt and a debt restructuring procedure was introduced.

According to the court documents, the reason for filing the lawsuit was a debt of RUB 16.4 m. Also the claims of Eldar Khalilov in the amount of more than RUB 200 m. were included in the register of claims.

R.E.D. LLC previously belonged to the structures of Alexey Govorunov’s business partner Vladimir Tulaev and his mother Irina Govorunova. The company acted as an investor in the hotel project at 6 Voznesensky pr., which, according to Delovoy Petersburg, led to the bankruptcy of the organisation. From 2010 to 2018, the facility belonged to R.E.D. LLC, in 2018 it was taken over by Alexey Govorunov’s Forum LLC, and in October 2023, Voznesensky Prospekt JSC, whose shareholders are not officially disclosed, became the owner of the building.

A year ago, R.E.D. LLC filed a bankruptcy petition against Forum, but the court left it without consideration.

‘R. E. D. Ltd. has itself been in bankruptcy since 2020. As part of this case, Alexey Govorunov was brought to subsidiary liability and the transactions between R.E.D. LLC and Forum LLC were challenged (including the transaction on Forum’s purchase of the hotel),’ said Sergei Bakeshin, Counsel, Head of Dispute Resolution and Insolvency Practice at Maxima Legal. – Govorunov’s debt to Khalilov arose due to a breach of the agency agreement, under which Govorunov was supposed to buy out the claims to TD Intertorg LLC from Sber’s structures (this follows from the decision of the Kirovsky District Court). If so, he is not connected with the hotel’.

If the hotel on Voznesensky belonged to the company, then it will be extremely difficult to challenge the deal on its sale in a bankruptcy case of a citizen who is a participant of the seller (the citizen was not a party to the deal), the expert emphasised. Even more difficult, according to Sergei, will be to justify why in the bankruptcy estate of a citizen should go to the object, never directly belonged to him.

‘But within the framework of the citizen’s bankruptcy case, claims may arise against the company (for example, as a result of disputing the loans that the citizen may have provided to his company), which will allow initiating the bankruptcy of the company and the subsequent contestation of the transaction on the sale of the hotel,’ Sergei Bakeshin explained to the Delovoy Peterburg newspaper.

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