Published on 5 January 2026
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 39611/20
SKYCITY-GROUP, TOV
against Ukraine
lodged on 19 August 2020
communicated on 10 December 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns a raider attack on the applicant company, which had allegedly been rendered possible because of the deficiencies in the legislation, and a deprivation of its property as the debt the applicant company was supposed to receive from its commercial counteragent had been received by the raiders, and domestic courts failed to acknowledge that.
The applicant, a limited liability company with a sole owner, had a commercial case pending before the domestic courts regarding the payment by company Z. of the amount due under a contract between them.
While those proceedings were pending, the applicant company was overtaken by raiders. Its lawful owner was able to regain control over the company only in April 2018, following court proceedings which had established that the change of ownership had been conducted illegally.
The lawful owner also initiated several sets of criminal proceedings related to that overtake, including fraud and falsification of documents.
It appears that some two months after the overtake, company Z. paid its debt; the money was, apparently, transferred to a new account opened by the new management in the applicant company’s name.
In May 2018 the Cherkasy Regional Commercial Court terminated the commercial proceedings since the debt had been paid and the issue had, therefore, been settled. The applicant company sought a review of that judgment relying on the fact that the money had been transferred to the wrong bank account (to which it had no access) and company Z.’s awareness of the raider attack as well as its possible collusion with the new management.
Those claims were eventually rejected; the final judgment was adopted by the Supreme Court on 20 February 2020.
The courts acknowledged that in 2016-2018 the applicant company had been overtaken by third persons. They nevertheless held that the outstanding debt had been duly paid and the fact that the payment had been made to a different bank account, but which belonged to the applicant company, could not be considered as any misdeed on the part of company Z. Furthermore, that payment had taken place long before the raider overtake of the applicant company was established by the courts. The courts also noted that the applicant company’s argument regarding the fraudulent obtaining of money in its name by third parties were to be examined in the framework of criminal proceedings.
The applicant company complained under Article 6 of the Convention of the lengthy examination of the case by the commercial courts and their eventual rejection of its claims which had lacked proper reasoning. It also complained under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 of the State’s failure to safeguard it from raiders, stemming from the deficiencies in the legislation, and that it had been deprived of its property as the debt under the contract with company Z. had been received by the raiders.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Did the applicant company have a fair hearing in the determination of its civil rights and obligations? In particular, did the domestic courts provide sufficient reasons for their decisions and were their decisions “arbitrary” and/or “manifestly unreasonable” (see Bochan v. Ukraine (no. 2) [GC], no. 22251/08, §§ 61‑64, ECHR 2015; and Ramos Nunes de Carvalho e Sá v. Portugal [GC], nos. 55391/13 and 2 others, § 185, 6 November 2018, with further references)?
2. Has there been an interference with the applicant company’s peaceful enjoyment of possessions, within the meaning of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1? Has the State discharged its positive obligation to afford the necessary procedural guarantees for the applicant company to assert its property rights (see, mutatis mutandis, Sovtransavto Holding v. Ukraine, no. 48553/99, §§ 96-97, ECHR 2002‑VII)?