A LONG SALE OF REAL ESTATE AT A HIGH PRICE DOES NOT INDICATE UNEQUAL CONDITIONS

The manager applied to the court to challenge the chain of real estate purchase and sale transactions (case no. A63-8246/21).

The court of first instance refused to satisfy the application, since the disputed transactions were actually executed, the real estate objects were removed from the possession of the debtor, who did not retain the possibility of ownership and use after its alienation, which excludes the possibility of qualifying the disputed transaction as imaginary.

At the same time, the court noted that the statute of limitations for applying for invalidation of transactions on special grounds was missed, since the transactions were made outside the three-year period of suspicion. Since the conclusion of the first contract, the debtor has not filed any claims regarding payment under the transaction for 5 years.

The appeal satisfied the claim, concluding that the transactions, as a result of which the defendants received the disputed land and home ownership, are fake, and the covered transaction between the debtor and the co-defendant is invalid on the basis of the Bankruptcy Law, and also noted that the defendants knew about the illegal purpose of the transactions, in connection with which in fact The purchase and sale agreement concluded with the co-respondent was committed with abuse of law, aimed at harming other creditors of the debtor and is an imaginary transaction made in order to exclude the possibility of the actual disposal of the debtor's property belonging to him.

The cassation left the ruling of the first instance partially in force, in the rest it sent the dispute for a new appeal, pointing out that the circumstances concerning the establishment of the presence (absence) of the fact of the pretense of successive purchase and sale transactions, the reality of the transfer of actual control over real estate objects to the final buyer were essential for the correct consideration of the dispute, for which it is necessary determine the intention of the parties. Namely, whether their will corresponded to the expression of their will expressed externally through the registration of documents formally testifying to the commission of not one, but several transactions.

The Court of Appeal has not established any disputable circumstances in the conduct and actual actions committed and performed by the defendant during the conclusion of the disputed contract and upon its execution to the present moment.

Concluding that there is a chain of transactions, the court of appeal did not establish the actual links between the parties to the transactions, as well as who is the final beneficiary and what is the affiliation of all participants in the chain indicated by it.

Pointing to the unequal value of one of the transactions, the court of appeal did not take into account that the disputed house was put up for sale on Avito from 2017 to 2019 at a price of 20 million rubles, but it was not sold. Thus, the court's conclusion about the undervalued house does not correspond to the case materials.