The key interpretive judgment of the Court on bankruptcy issues is supplemented with new guidelines. In particular, the Court points out that:

- a contractor of insolvent debtor may prove that a “suspicious” transaction was not purported to cause damage to creditors; it follows that the criteria of “suspiciousness” of a transaction as provided for in Art 61.2 of the Bankruptcy Law should be interpreted as refutable presumptions;

- in case of a wrong qualification of the contested transaction by a plaintiff – either as a “preferred transaction” (that is, an unfair preference or a “preferential transfer” – where debtor transfers assets or pays a debt shortly before going into bankruptcy) or as a “suspicious” transaction – the court may at its own initiative change the wrongly chosen ground for challenging the transaction;

- the fact that contested transaction has been made with preference, in violation of Art 61.3 of Bankruptcy Law, may be testified to by a number of circumstances, such as a repeated recourse of the debtor to the creditor with the request to suspend the date of payment because of the impossibility to make it, etc;

- the transaction is not per se a suspicious one, if it is made between the debtor and a credit organization; it is a duty of the interested person who challenges such transaction to prove that the credit organization knew about difficult financial situation of the debtor when concluding and performing the transaction in question;

- the burden of proving that the transaction has been made in the course of ordinary economic activity lies with the other part of transaction, that is, with debtor’s contractor;

- for the purposes of contesting transactions in the event of bankruptcy the concept of “transactions made in the course of ordinary economic activity” may include by default (that is, if circumstances of the case do not indicate otherwise) various payments under continuous obligations, for example: the repayment of the immediate part of the credit in accordance with the schedule of payments); the payment of monthly rent under a lease contract or payment of a salary; payments for public utilities, Internet and mobile phones; payment of taxes, etc.;

- on the other hand, this concept does not include (unless the circumstances indicate otherwise) payment significantly delayed; severance pay; the repayment of credit before time without reasonable economic justification.

The remaining clarifications relate to the returning of property, received under an invalid transaction, into general mass of bankrupt’s estate, as well as returning of property under a transaction which has not been yet invalidated. It is emphasized by the Court that bankruptcy trustees have a duty to propose to the debtor’s contractors whose transactions the trustee intends to contest as void, to voluntarily return everything received under such transactions. The deeming of a transaction to be void (invalid) entails the degradation in terms of priority of claims of the respective creditor, such degradation being in the view of the Court a special measure of responsibility. It follows hereof that the degradation in priority may not apply in the absence of creditor’s fault in making the voidable transaction.  

Practical consequences: the Judgment says that prior court decisions if inconsistent with the given interpretations (excepting one particular clause of the Judgment) may be reversed in the procedure and within the limits envisaged by Art 311 of the Commercial Procedure Code.