Bankrupts are pushing the boundaries – Kommersant

Bankrupts are pushing the boundaries - Kommersant

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The White House on Friday approved and submitted to the State Duma a bill that significantly expands the procedure for out-of-court bankruptcy of citizens. It is proposed to admit individuals with debts of 25 thousand rubles or more. up to 1 million rubles instead of the current range of 50 thousand rubles. up to 500 thousand rubles The conditions for bankruptcy are also softened for citizens in respect of whom enforcement proceedings have dragged on for years: it will be possible to use the procedure seven years after the presentation of the writ of execution, and for those whose only income is pensions or child benefits, already a year later.

The government at a meeting on Friday approved a bill that expands the use of out-of-court bankruptcy procedures by citizens, and by the evening submitted the document to the State Duma. The essence of this simplified procedure: now an individual with a debt of 50 thousand rubles. up to 500 thousand rubles and completed due to lack of property, enforcement proceedings can file an application for insolvency through the MFC. The debts indicated by him are written off after six months – if during this time there are no grounds for terminating the procedure or transferring it to the court (for example, when information about the availability of property appears).

Among the consequences of bankruptcy for a citizen is a three-year ban on participation in the management of a legal entity and the obligation for five years to indicate the fact of bankruptcy when applying for loans. According to the Federal Resource, since the launch of this mechanism in September 2020, 10.9 thousand such procedures have been completed with a total debt of 3.8 billion rubles.

The new rules, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced on Friday, should come into effect this year. First of all, the boundaries of debt are being pushed back. According to the project, the minimum debt to enter the procedure will be 25 thousand rubles, the maximum – 1 million rubles. The period until repeated out-of-court bankruptcy is halved – up to five years. It also introduces the possibility of applying to this procedure for citizens in respect of whom enforcement proceedings have been dragging on for seven or more years, that is, when a writ of execution was presented, but during this period it was not executed in full. Note that the Council for the Codification of Civil Legislation under the President of the Russian Federation. who supported the project the day before, proposed supplementing this rule with a case where no writ of execution has been sent for seven years and no enforcement actions or enforcement measures have been taken.

Citizens whose only income is a pension (if there is no property that can be seized), a monthly allowance for children or pregnancy, will be able to use the procedure a year after the presentation of the writ of execution. Such an innovation in the Ministry of Economy, which developed the project, was explained by the fact that the living wage is protected from collection, but incomes exceeding it can be used to pay off the debt – and then this process stretches for decades (see “Kommersant” dated November 16, 2022).

Zoya Galeeva, managing partner of the Troubled Assets Center, believes that the changes will significantly expand the possibilities for out-of-court bankruptcy of citizens who cannot service their loans. The head of the Olevinsky, Buyukyan and Partners legal bureau, Eduard Olevinsky, calls the draft law useful, noting, in particular, the introduction of a seven-year “deadline”, which would be good to provide for any enforcement proceedings.

As Dmitry Savochkin, a partner at Sotheby’s law firm, adds, now the opportunity to take advantage of out-of-court bankruptcy is limited by the fact that, due to the workload, bailiffs do not always search for property in a timely manner – “executive documents have been in production for years and do not end.” According to Eduard Olevinsky, the project will reduce the pressure on arbitration courts caused by the avalanche increase in the number of bankruptcy cases of citizens, which has already exceeded 300 thousand a year. At the same time, he says, the authorities are expanding the possibilities of “exemption from unsustainable debts gradually, fearing a repetition of the mistakes of the United States, where in the early 2000s they had to seriously tighten such regulation, which was initially too free for debtors.”

Evgenia Kryuchkova, Anna Zanina

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