| Business people have found a solution to judicial arbitrariness A magistrate who wrongfully seized the shares of a Russian company, after the intervention of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, was convicted of violating the law, reversed his decision and was forced to take off his judicial robe. This event was a direct consequence of last week’s meeting of the public association of medium-sized businesses “Business Russia” with the Chairman of the Supreme Court (SC) Vyacheslav Lebedev (the newspaper “Vremya Novostey” reported about this in the issue dated September 28) . Then the entrepreneurs complained to the head of the judiciary that courts of general jurisdiction often accept claims of minority shareholders, which are subject exclusively to arbitration courts, which results in a hostile takeover of companies. In response to this, Mr. Lebedev asked to inform the Supreme Court about such cases and promised to deal with each of them. “Such judges should be removed from office and their cases should be transferred to the Prosecutor General’s Office. If they don’t want to work according to the rules of civil procedure, they will answer according to the rules of criminal procedure,” said the chairman of the Supreme Court.
Entrepreneurs took these words to heart. And already on September 30, the general director of the cellular communication company “SMARTS” Gennady Kiryushin, in an open letter, notified Mr. Lebedev that 4 thousand shares of their company at the end of August this year were illegally arrested by decision of the magistrate G.A. Shumsky in the Industrial district of Stavropol. As follows from the letter, the basis for the arrest was the claim of Phoenix LLC, registered in Moscow, against a resident of Stavropol, Olga Valentinovna Maslova, who allegedly improperly fulfilled a certain employment contract for the acquisition of 4 thousand shares of SMARTS.
Although neither the plaintiff nor the defendant appeared in court in person, the magistrate upheld the claim and, as a measure to ensure it, issued a ruling on the seizure of these same shares. The company received notification of this only on September 26, that is, 29 days after the decision was made, while the maximum period for its implementation was 30 days. Thus, SMARTS was deprived of any opportunity to appeal this decision. Meanwhile, citizen Maslova, as it turned out, does not actually own a single share of this company and does not work in any of its divisions. And the Phoenix company, in turn, has never been a shareholder, a customer, or a supplier of the SMARTS company. That is, neither the plaintiff nor the defendant in the case considered by Magistrate Shumsky had anything to do with this cellular communication company, but it was decided to arrest its shares.
The Supreme Court's reaction to Mr. Kiryushin's letter followed immediately. The case was requested, and Magistrate Shumsky was pointed out that he had committed a significant violation of the law. On October 3, Mr. Shumsky was forced to make three decisions at once. He was the first to deny the claim of Phoenix LLC against citizen Maslova “for the obligation to properly fulfill the employment contract.” The second was to cancel the measures he had taken to secure this claim in the form of the seizure of 4 thousand ordinary shares of SMARTS CJSC. And to the third, he wrote a letter of resignation from the position of justice of the peace. Mr. Shumsky was dismissed from the ranks of the judicial community “at his own request due to the need for employment in a new place of work.” However, as Vremya Novostey was told yesterday by the press service of the Supreme Court, otherwise this magistrate would face serious proceedings, including the initiation of a criminal case against him. Ekaterina BUTORINA |
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