MIKHAIL GUSEV COMMENTARY IN THE PROBANKROTSTVO
The court of appeal reduced the amount of interest on the remuneration of the bankruptcy trustee in the bankruptcy case of JSC Antipinsky Neftepererabatyvayushiy Zavod from 5.4 billion to 200 million rubles.
The initial amount was calculated based on the amount of satisfied claims of secured creditors - PJSC Sberbank of Russia and LLC SBK. But the court considered such remuneration to be unreasonably high and not corresponding to the real contribution of the trustee.
According to the head of the Dispute Resolution practice, lawyer Mikhail Gusev, the dispute deserves attention despite the fact that it is not new in bankruptcy practice.
See the Ruling of the Judicial Collegium for Economic Disputes of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated 09.12.2024 No. 307-ES24-13734: when establishing the amount of remuneration of the bankruptcy trustee, the directcontribution of the trustee must be taken into account, and in the absence of evidence of a significant contribution, the court cannot collect remuneration in the maximum amount.
In the case under consideration, the courts again faced the question of whether the amount of remuneration to be collected corresponds to the contribution of the trustee to the result of the procedure (satisfaction of creditors' claims).
The difficulty lies in the fact that the satisfaction of creditors' claims is carried out through the sale of the pledged property, and not the property that was found/protected/returned by the trustee to the bankruptcy estate.
According to the lawyer, it is worth expecting that the dispute under comment has a chance to reach the resolution of the Judicial Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation for the purpose of forming a reasonable approach of the courts in applying the provisions of the Bankruptcy Law.
Mikhail drew special attention to the court's attempt to compare the amount of the bankruptcy trustee's remuneration with the amount of remuneration of the top management of large Russian companies.
«Considering the difference in the functions of the bankruptcy trustee and top management, such a comparison cannot be considered reasonable.»