Supreme Court of Russia resolved the issue of initiating bankruptcy due to deed of assignment

The Economic Board resolved the case on the complaint of the creditor, whose claims for further consideration of the debtor's insolvency case were rejected. The problem was that the applicant had no outstanding debt, and three lower authorities considered that it was not possible to initiate proceedings way without it.

Initially, the debtor's overdue obligation to the bank arose, and the bank subsequently signed an assignment agreement with an ordinary legal entity. It was the fact that the applicant did not have a banking license, which confused the lower authorities, and they stopped the proceedings.

However, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation took a different position, indicating that despite the fact that the applicant himself did not have the status of a credit institution, he had the right to initiate bankruptcy without a judicial act.

The thing is that under an assignment agreement, the assignee accepts the amount of rights that the assignor himself has under the agreement from the assignor. Thus, if the original contract on which the claimant based his claims did not need to prolong the debt in order to file for insolvency, then the same procedure should be applied when transferring rights to the assignee.

The result of the consideration of the case was the cancellation of all three court decisions of lower instances and the direction of the case for reconsideration (decision № 306-ES21-19450 in case No. A55-24680 / 2020 dated December 24, 2021).