THE PURCHASE OF CRYPTOCURRENCY STILL NEEDS TO BE PROVED

The court of first instance granted the application and proceeded from the fact that the debtor had unfulfilled monetary obligations that had been formed during the period significantly earlier than the disputed payment and subsequently included in the register of creditors' claims of the debtor; the person concerned did not comply with the court's requirement to provide evidence in the case file confirming the counter-provision in favor of the debtor for the disputed payment.

The appeal refused to satisfy the claims, pointing out that, based on the results of an analysis of the debtor's financial condition, the financial manager concluded that the debtor showed signs of insolvency later than the contested transaction; within three years prior to accepting the application for declaring the debtor bankrupt, the debtor had made a significant number of payments. After the contested transaction, the debtor made large payments; the court assumed that at the time of the contested transaction, the debtor's financial difficulties were not obvious to independent counterparties.

According to the explanation of the representative of the person concerned, the disputed payment was made in order to purchase cryptocurrency. There is no evidence of a person's interest in the debtor, his awareness of the signs of insolvency or insufficiency of the debtor's property, as well as the illegality of the purpose of the transaction.

The cassation upheld the ruling of the first instance. The Court noted: considering that the debtor's monetary obligations to the companies arose before the execution of the disputed transaction, the claims of these creditors were included in the register of creditors' claims of the debtor and were not repaid, the fact of the debtor's insolvency during the period of the disputed transaction was correctly established by the court of first instance.

Since, at the request of the court, the parties to the disputed transaction did not provide evidence in the case file confirming the purchase of cryptocurrency for the debtor, the court of appeal had no grounds to recognize the counter-obligation in the amount of the disputed payment fulfilled. In this case, the circumstances referred to by the financial manager, in their entirety, could indicate purposeful actions to withdraw assets from the debtor's property sphere virtually free of charge, in the absence of any financial provision from the interested party, that is, there are sufficient grounds for qualifying the actions of the parties as aimed at harming creditors and for recognizing the disputed transaction is suspicious.