A detective story for creditors: how to trace debtor’s assets on your own and in a cost-effective way

The search for the assets of a “delinquent” counterparty should begin with the same thing that any successful business starts with, i.e. planning. Egor Chilikov, a partner of Petrol Chilikov law firm, stressed this point. Planning helps to focus the search in a unified direction, not to disperse effort and to control the process as it proceeds. In addition, a well-crafted plan allows a creditor to set priorities and benchmarks and to follow them to inevitably achieve the goal.

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Olesya Petrol, a partner of Petrol Chilikov and a member of the Russian Ministry of Justice’s Arbitration Improvement Council, began her presentation by reminding that before launching every project it makes sense to “test the economics”. The costs of running a project can (and often do) exceed the profits it has generated. A project approach can and should be applied to asset tracing, and particularly to the tracing of the assets abroad, and the economics of the claim should be calculated in advance to make sure that it is worth the cost.

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