KK&P defended a Russian billionaire (Forbes List) from being brought to subsidiary liability for $46 million

Our client owned shares in Cypriot companies that were shareholders in the sole participant of an insolvent Moscow development company.

The majority lender of the developer (a large bank with state participation) tried to bring the client to subsidiary liability for failure to file for bankruptcy and inability to fully repay creditors’ claims.

KK&P Partner and head of the firm’s bankruptcy practice Nikolay Pokryshkin, Senior Associates Sergey Lysov and Dmitry Ilin, Associate Nikita Chernyshenko, and Paralegals Angelina Salamatova and Nataliya Dyganova managed to convince the Moscow Commercial Court that the bank had missed the statute of limitations.

The issue of limitation is one of the most complex in disputes concerning subsidiary liability since the court must determine the beginning of the statute of limitation taking into account the applicable version of the Bankruptcy Law. In addition, the question of the actual and imputed knowledge of the opponents of the alleged offence remains complex, given the evidence they submitted and the actual ways of obtaining it, the sufficiency of only some of the evidence submitted to start the statute of limitation, as well as the alleged possibility of more rapid collection of evidence in case of reasonable and conscientious actions of the opponents.

Furthermore, the client’s defence included six independent lines of argument, which resulted in the claim being rejected.