ИСТИНА

Доклад на английском языке. Insolvency law regulates a range of complex relationships between interested parties. Russian insolvency law for a long time has been considered as containing well-balanced concept of creditors’ and debtor rights enforcement. The latest amendments of Russian legal framework in 2009 introduced new rules making the law more oriented to creditors’ treatment. First, the basis and period of transactions voidance were extended: 1. Suspicious transactions now can be divided into two types: • Transactions with unequal counter-performance which can be found out during one year (instead of 6 month) before filing for bankruptcy. The main feature to be proved is whether that the asset was underrated or overpriced in comparison with market level or that the debtor could not fulfill his obligations because of the physical absence of assets, for instance. • Transactions deliberately made for causing harm to creditors’ interests. In this case period of examination increased from 1 year to 3 years before filing for bankruptcy. The other amendment is a “presumption of guilt” making this voidance more probable for creditors: it is not necessary to prove that the interested party knew about imminent debtor’s insolvency or his aim to diminish assets (what definitely causes harm to creditors’ interests in bankruptcy proceedings). 2. Transactions giving preference to one creditor prior to other creditors. Now if creditor wants to get additional security of existing debt in advance to debtor’s bankruptcy he should take into account the opportunity of this transaction voidance. If transaction has been invalidated during bankruptcy proceedings the assets is included in bankrupt’s estate to be distributed among all creditors. Some kind of penalty is for creditor who has participated in such deal: his claims will hardly be satisfied in the end of ranking. Second, creditors’ rights could be presented in a better way by loyal insolvency administrator, so to have an opportunity of his choice creditor should file for bankruptcy first. Third, subsidiary liability of the debtor’s director and “control persons of the debtor” when the assets are not enough for claims satisfaction is the other mechanism for creditors’ protection. But such liability, unfortunately, does not cause the cases of fictitious and deliberate bankruptcies, asset stripping caused by the unfair debtor. Moreover, the same assets can be pledged for many times making the conflict of interests between creditors real. The auction is affected to different types of manipulations for repatriation of property in the definite way. As a result only about 6-8% of all creditors’ claims are satisfied in the end of proceedings. However sometimes debtor should also defend from creditors. The possibilities of using some gaps in Russian Insolvency Law which allows the third parties to become creditors of the particular debtor or the existing minority creditors to use bankruptcy mechanism for the hostile takeover of debtor’s company which has attractive and expensive assets. The historical features of Russian economy and the continuing processes of the property repatriation explain the high level of the corporate raiding extension. The research shows that nowadays Russian insolvency regulation is oriented on the satisfaction of the less priority but better organized creditors (banks and other financial institutes) than of the debtors’ employees. The volume of the salary obligations is often more than the demands of the largest creditor, but workers still have limited rights to participate in the bankruptcy procedure and no adequate defense of their interests.