Based on the changes already being made to the regulations, it is planned to introduce compulsory licenses for this activity and oblige specialists to confirm their qualifications in commissions under the Ministry of Justice, said Ekaterina Sonina, advisor to the Business Ombudsman of Sverdlovsk. All this causes concern both among non-state experts themselves and among lawyers. They believe that due to the reduction of choice, the time and cost of providing such services will increase and, in addition, the principle of competition will be violated in the process. This will be especially serious in economic disputes: today up to 90 percent of opinions on them in the Arbitration Court of the Sverdlovsk region are prepared by non-state experts.
– The reform must be discussed with the participation of all interested parties. So far, neither non-state forensic experts, nor representatives of the judicial community, nor those who most often act as plaintiffs have participated in this,” Sonina said.
Proponents of change have their own arguments: private professionals are not always highly qualified and, in fact, are not responsible for the results, which influences the quality of judicial rulings.
– The Supreme Court clarified: when the evidence in a case is contradictory, an alternative opinion is needed. Without this, a decision cannot be made. The judge has no knowledge, for example, in the field of thermal engineering or construction. When choosing an expert, you must have confidence in his or her competence. The conclusion must be written in simple and understandable language, all terms must be deciphered. Unfortunately, some people do not pay attention to the motivational part, which allows them to understand why they came to such conclusions, ”Svetlana Tsvetkova, honorably retired president of the Arbitration Court of the Sverdlovsk region, shared her experience.
When the evidence is contradictory, an alternative opinion is needed: the judge has no knowledge in the field of thermal engineering or construction.
Lev Segal, a participant in the interregional forum organized by the Ural Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Russian Society of Appraisers association, drew attention to the lack of a unified methodology. The appraiser acts within the framework of the Federal Valuation Law and the industrial expert, within the framework of the Civil Code. The first, according to federal standards, does not have the right to use information that became available after the date of calculation of the market value of the object, while the second, provided during the consideration of the case, does not have such a prohibition. As a result, the resulting figures may differ several times. Following the same logic, the appraiser and the bank’s collateral department employee often disagree on figures. The reason is not that one of them made a mistake, but that different techniques were used. “We must work in a unified legal field, this will reduce the number of disputes over property,” Segal emphasized.
Throughout Russia, there are 6-7 thousand professional appraisers who have passed qualification exams, ensured their responsibility and joined self-regulatory organizations. About 300 serve the Sverdlovsk region. According to the president of the Ural Chamber of Real Estate, Valeria Kozlova, without them not a single transaction with commercial property and loans secured by the property of a legal entity can be carried out. Financial advisors are also in high demand when challenging contracts in bankruptcy, collecting back taxes, and holding company directors to subsidiary liability. The most difficult type of valuation is the valuation of companies: shares of an LLC, mergers and acquisitions, transactions between subsidiaries. In addition, a new procedure for accounting for fixed assets will come into force from November 2022. It forces business accountants to identify signs of asset impairment. Not everyone still analyzes balance sheets through the concepts of “fair value” and “value assumptions”, but the situation will gradually change.
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