Subordination of Claims of Affiliated Creditors: Vectors of Development of Russian Judicial Practice

 In Russia, the institution of subordination of claims of affiliated creditors has been formed and is developing due to judicial practice. In 2020, a Review of judicial practice in resolving disputes related to the establishment of requirements of controlling debtors and affiliated persons in bankruptcy proceedings was approved, which the main approaches to subordination were formed. However, even after the approval of this Review, judicial practice continues to evolve, which requires its own scientific understanding to ensure the unity of law enforcement and create the basis for further legislative reform.

The purpose of the study is to develop a scientific approach to assessing the evolution and further development of judicial practice on the problems of subordination of claims of affiliated creditors.

When writing this article, general scientific methods (system, functional, group of logical methods) and special legal methods (formal legal, legal modeling method) were applied.

The article concludes that the institution of subordination in the absence of special legislation is formed through judicial practice, since the court interprets and applies not only the norms, but also the principles of law included in the general system of forms of law and having priority over the norms. It is noted that Russia is characterized by a soft subordination model that considers not only the affiliation and the existence of a debtor’s property crisis, but also the conditions and objectives of financing. In this regard, the main vectors of judicial practice development have been studied to clarify certain concepts (affiliation, property crisis), as well as the subordination of individual claims of affiliated creditors (claims of collateral creditors, claims subordinated on contractual terms, claims for current payments, creditors’ claims in case of bankruptcy of individuals).