A resident of Kazakhstan, holding a stake in a limited liability partnership (LLP) worth just 26,600 tenge, has managed to be declared bankrupt through court, despite formally owning an asset. Earlier, the courts of first and appellate instances refused her claim, citing her share in the charter capital, but the cassation court overturned their decisions... reports infohub.kz.
Citizen Kh., a disabled person of group II suffering from an oncological disease, applied to the court to be declared bankrupt. Her debt to creditors reached 4.5 million tenge. However, the district and regional courts rejected her application because she was registered as owning a 25.9% share in the charter capital of a private partnership.
The cassation panel on civil cases reviewed the case materials and found the conclusions of the lower courts erroneous. First, the actual value of the share turned out to be insignificant: the LLP has not been operating for more than two years, all the company's property is estimated at 103,000 tenge, so the woman's share is only 26,677 tenge — an amount incomparable to the million-strong debt. Second, the applicant did not receive any dividends from the legal entity, and her only source of livelihood remained disability benefits.
The cassation court emphasized that courts should consider a person's actual solvency and the real value of their assets, rather than rely on formal records of shares. As a result, the refusal was overturned, and the procedure of judicial bankruptcy was officially applied to citizen Kh.