Arbitration courts of Moscow and Moscow Region, the 9th and 10th Arbitration Appeal Courts (Moscow) and the Federal Arbitration Court of the Moscow District. Examples of our representation of clients' interests in these courts:
Antimonopoly legislation
A strategy was developed and implemented to protect the rights of a telecommunications company in the terms of free tariff setting by excluding it from the Register of natural monopolies. According to the statement, supported by the Ministry of Communications of Russia, a clause of the normative legal act of the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Antimonopoly Policy and Support to Entrepreneurship was abolished (clause “e” of Article 1 of the Decree of the MAP of Russia dated October 13, 2000, No. 761). Following the abolition of this clause, the MAP of Russia excluded the telecommunications company from the Register of natural monopolies in the field of communications.
Representation of the interests of a power grid company in the Moscow OFAS in administrative proceedings in the case of violation of the antimonopoly legislation providing for a turnover-based fine. A correctly chosen legal position and credibility of its representation led to the reduction of the fine amount to the minimum level, the turnover-based fine in the originally established amount was not collected.
Law of Obligations
A client applied for a recovery of damages ($1, 500, 000), caused by his refusal to execute a contract of independent contractor work because of the customer's failure to provide the necessary assistance. The Customer instructed a Contractor (a client of LexProf) to build a construction facility in the hard-to-reach area of the Far North. The client delivered equipment worth $1.5 mln to the construction facility, agreed on a design for the production of works, and started work. Within two months from the beginning of the Contractor's work the Customer accepted the work, signed the acts of the executed works in the established form. Five months after the contract conclusion, the Customer sent the Contractor the specification documents, in which he changed the way of performing the work. During the incoming inspection of the specification documents, the Contractor found errors in them that did not allow achieving the work results under the contract, and the Customer was immediately informed about that. The Contractor suspended process of the work and requested the Customer to eliminate errors in the specification documents and also proposed some options for technical solutions. The lack of necessary assistance from the Customer forced the Contractor to withdraw from the contract. The Customer's refusal to pay for the work performed by the Contractor was overcome in the court with the participation of the lawyers of LexProf on the part of the Contractor and as a result actually performed work was paid to the Contractor, and damages were collected.
The protection of the rights of the principal (the Customer) from the Contractor’s unlawful claim of the cost of the performed work was carried out by checking the quality and scope of such work during the lawsuit. The expert examination based on the court decision was assigned in the lawsuit.
Tax law
Representation of the interests of the taxpayer (an energy company) in challenging the decision of the tax authority to refuse to recognize the tax payment paid and additional charge to pay the amount of tax, penalty and fine. The case was complicated by the fact that after the taxpayer had submitted payment documents to the bank, the latter had his license revoked, which prevented the flow of funds to the budget.
Representation of the interests of the taxpayer (an energy complex enterprise) in challenging the Tax Authority Act on additional income tax, value added tax, penalty and fine. The position of the taxpayer was based on the rationale for the economic feasibility of transactions made by the company, as well as the completeness and reliability of sets of documents provided to the tax authority for the implementation of tax deductions.
Banks
A client had an account in the bank that terminated cash payments. Before applying to the law firm LexProf, the client tried to recover money from the bank by applying to a court of general jurisdiction, but was denied referring to the arguments of the bank's representatives about the lack of assets on the client's bank account. The lawyers of LexProf chose a different tactic. Taking into account the fact that the bankruptcy proceedings of this bank were implemented, a petition was submitted to the Moscow Arbitration Court on the client’s behalf with claims to be entered in the register of the bank's charges. The court granted the petition, since the bank's representatives did not have any documents confirming the fact of the assets disposition on his account. The decree of entry in the register of creditors' claims establishes the fact of existence of the bank’s prejudicial obligation to the client. Consequently, the client of LexProf received the right to compensation for damages, as well as satisfaction of his claims as a part of the other bank’s creditors’ claims from the value of the property sold during the bankruptcy proceedings.