June 29 Out of court cases

Alexander Pogodin, lawyer, Deputy Head of the Bureau of Lawyers “De jure”, took part as a speaker at the III All-Russian conference “Crisis Conf 2023”. The event is one of the largest events of the anti-crisis management and legal services market, gathering leading industry experts for constructive discussions on the hottest topics. A separate event of the Conference was a discussion on the topic of arbitration courts. Being an expert practitioner, within the framework of the session devoted to the topic of bankruptcy, Alexander made a report on the topic: “Subsidiary and criminal-legal risks of managers in bankruptcy”. Taking into account, that the dynamics of the application of the institution of subsidiary liability in bankruptcy is growing rapidly, the number of issues arising in law enforcement practice is also growing. In his speech, Alexander analyzed the features and problems that arise when courts consider disputes on bringing managers to subsidiary responsibility due to the lack of a doctrinal basis and the ambiguity of the explanations of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. Particular attention was paid to the fact that bringing officials to subsidiary liability sharply increases the risks of bringing them to criminal responsibility. A large number of leaders of various levels of debtor organizations fall into the risk zone and become vulnerable to various kinds of pressure during the preliminary investigation in criminal cases. At the same time, judicial acts of arbitration courts that have established facts of bad faith and abuse of law are recognized as evidence in a criminal case by way of prejudice. Based both on the analysis of the current judicial practice and on his practical experience, the lawyer notes that the vicious law enforcement practice of Articles 210 and 201 of the Criminal Code of Russia (legal uncertainty of Note 1 in relation to entrepreneurs, legal uncertainty regarding the qualifying signs of Article 201 of the Criminal Code of Russia – significant harm and grave consequences) leads to a free interpretation of the norms and opportunities for abuse. In his report, Alexander tried to analyze which of the emerging problems of bringing officials to subsidiary liability are related to the shortcomings of the legislation, which run into the difficulties of law enforcement practice, and also how the legislator and judicial practice react to them. At the same time, the lawyer presented for discussion and further development of proposals for specifying Note 1 to Article 201 of the Criminal Code of Russia, qualifying signs of Article 201 of the Criminal Code of Russia – significant harm and grave consequences through clarifications from the Plenum of the Supreme Court and amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.