November 14 2019, Academy of Justice with the support of World Bank – IFC group organized training on the Bankruptcy procedure of business organizations. Purpose of this training was to extend the judges knowledge on bankruptcy, the liquidation procedure and reorganization of legal persons in the bankruptcy procedure.
First part of the training elaborated on the following: general provisions of the Law; expedited procedures (SME-s and pre-packages); initiation, opening and consequence of the case; creditors requests; creditors requests and reorganization. Whereas the second part of this training covered the following: Liquidation; individual exempt and closure of the case as well as final provisions.
The training highlighted that the new Law on Bankruptcy raised the necessity to regulate the liquidation procedure and reorganization of business organizations, since the previous law was incomplete, it relied on regulations that were never promulgated and as a result this law became inapplicable. The new Law on Bankruptcy has a comprehensive approach on bankruptcy and insolvency, which reflects the best international practices and contains many institutes and other specifics that were hardly familiar in our legal system.
It further emphasized that this law foresees the liquidation and reorganization procedures of all business organizations, including individual businesses, partnerships and limited partnerships, that constitutes the main change from the old law. The Law contains nine chapters that regulate the reorganization and liquidation procedure including new concepts like: facilitating small and medium enterprises, individual exempt and international procedures. Upon entrance into force of this law and obvious increase of court cases is expected, therefore elaboration of these topics was very important for enhancing the judge’s knowledge on this area.
At the end, it was highlighted that the new Law adopts the UNICTRAL Model Law on cross-border Bankruptcy and allows foreign administrators to open limited cases in Kosovo in order to administer assets that are property of/ or that involve a foreign case.
This training used and applied an interactive methodology that consisted of discussions and conversations, theoretical lecturing on bankruptcy, liquidation procedure and reorganization of legal persons in the bankruptcy procedure; presentation of hypothetical cases and concrete cases from the national and regional case law, and discussion on the ways of merit based decisions on concrete cases.
Beneficiaries of this training were judges of the Commercial Department within the Prishtina Basic Court and of the Appeals Court, judges of general departments – civil divisions of basic courts, we well as bankruptcy administrators.
14-11-2019