FGUP Rosenergoatom is a Russian energy company, operator of Russian nuclear power stations. Its full corporate name is Open Joint-Stock Company Concern for Production of Electric and Thermal Energy at Nuclear Power Stations (OJSC Concern Energoatom). The unified generating company FGUP Rosenergoatom currently includes all 10 Russian nuclear power stations, with an installed capacity of 23242 MW (el.), including the Leningrad Nuclear Power Station, previously operated by the Ministry for Nuclear Power of Russia.
The Project:
Court recovery, in favour of the Client, of a multi-million debt for electric power supplied to OJSC Kubanenergo.
Project term:
August 2003 – June 2006
Project description:
The Project was of unprecedented complexity because it was far from clear to the court instances that the Client was judicially in the right on the basis of implicit and hardly noticeable nuances of the civil legislation, and because of the very specific regional judicial practice which, in a number of cases, objectively did not comply with the precise sense of several rules of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.
The legal position formulated by Vegas Lex for the Client was specific in that, in order to achieve the required result for the Client, was had to justify in court the unlawful nature of a number of actions taken by the Client itself before we began working on the Project. The given position argued that certain agreements had not actually been concluded by the Client even though they had been signed by the Client’s representative (who later figured in a criminal case for fraud). Under these agreements, the right of claim against Kubanenergo of the debt for electric power was transferred, by offsetting schemes, from the Client to third parties (a large proportion of which were enterprises of the Housing and Utilities Department of Krasnodar Territory). It was clear to the Krasnodar Territory courts that satisfaction of the Client’s suit against Kubanenergo would entail reinstatement of their own considerable debts to Kubanenergo and subsequent bankruptcy, which might cause social tension in the region. For this reason, for a successful outcome of the Project, it was vital for us to achieve not so much a court ruling on recovery of the debt, but rather affirmation by the court of an amicable settlement under which Kubanenergo admitted its debt and voluntarily agreed to pay it.
By combining persistent representation of the Client’s interests at all judicial instances, on the one hand, and negotiations with representatives of OJSC Kubanenergo, on the other, we managed to convince the latter to recognise the Client’s claims as justified. The case passed through the three instances (first, appeal and cassation) twice and was finally concluded only during the third round of the first instance with the signing of two amicable agreements for the entire sum of the debt and its voluntary remittance to the Client.
