THE SUPREME COURT SIDED WITH BANKRUPT AND DEFENDED MEMORIAL VALUE

A difficult case was considered the other day by the Judicial Board for Economic Disputes. The situation that developed during the bankruptcy case of Zhanna Karepanova (case №. А71-1097 / 2020) caused controversy among lawyers and ordinary people. According to experts, the decision of the Supreme Court may create a precedent in Russian law enforcement practice and affect not only the legal, but also the moral and ethical aspects of bankruptcy.

The complaint of the financial manager Olesya Ogorodnikova against the court verdicts was considered on July 1.They did not want to exclude 1 million rubles of compensation, which was awarded for moral damage to a woman who lost her daughter as a result of murder in 2016, from the bankruptcy estate. The court ordered the murderer of Zhanna Korepanova's daughter to compensate the mother for moral damage. A prisoner sentenced to serving his sentence in prison transferred 2.5 thousand rubles to a special account of mother of a murdered woman every month. The latter supported her son, who had not reached the age of 18, with this money.

As a result, about 850 thousand remained unpaid.

In March 2020, Zhanna Mikhailovna was declared insolvent on her own initiative. She owed Uralsib Bank 6.4 million rubles and filed a bankruptcy petition herself. However, the attempts of the manager Ogorodnikova to withdraw the amount of moral damage for the murdered daughter from the bankruptcy estate did not find understanding among the representatives of the Russian Themis. The courts rejected the claims.

The first was the arbitration court of Udmurtia, which did not check the market value of the claim against a murderer serving his sentence in prison.Instead of this, the court considered that any decision of this kind, even if it is about the loss of a loved one, is a simple monetary obligation. And since the identity of the recipient of compensation does not matter, the right can be safely transferred to creditor.

Attempts to challenge this decision in the appeal (November 2, 2020) and cassation (January 14, 2021) did not change the situation. Ogorodnikova applied to the Supreme Court of Russia. As a result, a verdict that cancelled all the previous rulings, was published on the website of the Supreme Court on July 7 (No. 309-ES21-4917). The Board drew attention to the possibility of excluding property from the bankruptcy estate when its implementation does not significantly affect the interests of creditors. However, the document is not only about the balance of interests, but about the minimum that is necessary to preserve the ‘social life’ for the debtor.

The board’s ruling refers to such compensation as a value that is primarily a memorial for the mother of a murdered girl, but not a financial one.

Whether this case will become the basis for the complete exclusion of such payments from the bankruptcy estate is unclear. It is possible that this kind of issues will require the intervention of the legislator.