PRAGNUM advises a state-owned bank on the repayment of a loan of more than UAH 1.1 billion

Unfortunately, first due to the Covid pandemic, and then as a result of the aggressor's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many debtors decided that they could stop paying their bank loans. In our case, the bank's clients, a group of related individuals and legal entities, decided to withdraw their collateral through various schemes, including bankruptcy proceedings.

In the course of the bankruptcy case, the debtors divided the mortgaged property, creating “new real estate objects” and sold them to controlled entities. Since the debtors had no other property or funds, these actions created a threat of full loan default. At the same time, the main beneficiaries of these transactions were already involved in numerous criminal proceedings and litigations and did not shy away from “dirty play” against the bank. They partially forged and partially even destroyed documents, illegally changed the heads of enterprises to alienate all the property of the debtors, which significantly complicated the process.

PRAGNUM's advice to the bank allowed us to build a strategy that ensures the cancellation of the illegal sale of mortgaged property and its return to the debtors' ownership for recovery in favor of the bank. At the same time, we analyzed the debtors' business operations and the actions of their management and owners, and identified signs of fraud and bankruptcy.

AF PRAGNUM has developed a roadmap that includes a set of criminal and judicial tools (including interrogations, temporary access to documents, searches, invalidation of transactions and cancellation of registration actions) that will prove the illegal activities of the debtors' management, which will lead to their joint and several liability. 

In turn, such actions are an effective strategy for a bank to actually, and not just on paper, collect funds from debtors whose property has been “merged” by their management.