ZURICH COMPANY DEMANDS BANKRUPTCY OF ‘MECHEL-TRANS AUTO’

The Swiss company ASSTRA Forwarding AG, located in Zurich, filed a claim with the South Ural Arbitration Court, demanding the bankruptcy of the subsidiary of Mechel holding be.  The enterprise located in Chelyabinsk city owes more than € 47 thousand.  Earlier, the foreign company had already won a claim for the return of money in court, but the debt has not been paid.

Now, as the experts say, Mechel's subsidiary has every chance of going bankrupt. It is known that the holding belongs to the family of the Russian oligarch Igor Zyuzin, whose fortune was estimated at $ 500 million several years ago. He and his family members own more than 51% in Mechel's structures. However, the company has not been doing very well lately. This is confirmed by the numerous statements that counterparties have filed against various structures of the holding.

At the end of March, the claim for the bankruptcy of Mechel-Energo was considered by Chelyabinsk Arbitration Court.

It was filed by the Promenergoremont company due to the debt in the amount of over 8 million rubles. The Arbitration court of the Novosibirsk Region is considering a claim filed by the Yakut firm from Neryungri which is driving Mechel Engineering into bankruptcy in connection with a debt of 3.9 million rubles. The Yakutugol holding, which is also a part of Mechel, has been a defendant in bankruptcy claims seven times over the past three years.

In the spring of 2021, a message about Mechel's debts appeared on the website of the US government's securities and exchange commission. It stated that the holding had serious debts, which require restructuring to be paid off. The company's international creditors include BNP Paribas.

At the same time, the holding's liabilities, judging by the document, turned out to be more than the value of assets by more than 230 billion rubles.

The current debt to the Swiss is one of the many. ‘Mechel-Trans Auto’ did not pay for the contract for international cargo transportation. So far, the court has granted an adjournment until August 23 in the consideration of the application, since the bankruptcy claim was filed with violations. However, if the debt is not paid, and the plaintiff eliminates the violations, the case will be set in motion.

Zyuzin's company was a candidate for bankruptcy in July 2008, when criticisms of the head of government, Vladimir Putin, brought down the holding's shares, transforming the oligarch from a billionaire into a millionaire. So Mechel's structures are no strangers to the possibility of bankruptcy. However, the question of the international reputation of the holding's subsidiaries remains open.