Bankruptcy Litigation: Application of the Statute of Limitations

In mid-2020, the client received a "letter of happiness"—a petition to invalidate a chain of transactions involving the sale of the bankrupt debtor's assets. The grounds for invalidating the transactions are classic: Article 61.2 of the Bankruptcy Law (causing damage to creditors, since the transaction was conducted at a reduced price between affiliated parties) and Articles 10, 168, and 170 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (abuse of rights + sham transactions, the property remained with the same beneficiary).

The dispute was resolved promptly, and the court applied the statute of limitations and dismissed the challenge to the transactions. However, the cassation court ruled that the issue of the statute of limitations had not been fully examined.
And so, since September 2021, Usconsult specialists have been arguing in the court of first instance that there is no affiliation between the parties to the transaction, the property was sold at market value, all the transactions are real, and the statute of limitations has expired.
The dispute took over three years to resolve, including nearly a year spent considering the petition for a forensic expert examination. The case involved 39 court hearings!

Despite some of the previous owners having already been removed from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Usconsult specialists gathered evidence to once again convince the court that there were no grounds to grant the claims challenging the transactions.