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After being convicted in court for several crimes, Eike Batista seeks protection from creditors, through a request for judicial recovery, in order to settle his debts and get out of bankruptcy
From the peak, after holding the title of the seventh richest person in the world, in 2012, with a fortune estimated at approximately $ 34,5 billion, to the world of bankruptcy Soon after becoming the target of Operation lava Jato and being convicted of the crimes of active corruption, money laundering and market manipulation and being arrested, signing a plea agreement with the Attorney General's Office (PGR), Eike Batista Batista left a series of billionaire debts and declared bankruptcy, even considering that some of his businesses were successful in the hands of other owners. Faced with debts, the former billionaire decided to seek protection from creditors, filing for bankruptcy in 2013.
The oil company OGX, formed in the grandiose plans of Eike Batista, with the objective of becoming a "mini-Petrobras", started Eike Batista's debts and bankruptcy, since it was the first undertaking of the former billionaire not to deliver the promised performance. Soon after, it was the turn of the OSX shipyard and the mining company MMX.
The requests for judicial recovery of the pile stood out due to the size of Eike Batista's debts, putting the current Bankruptcy Law, validated in 2005, to the test. , which served as a model for situations involving companies and creditors based in foreign countries, according to Juliana Bumachar, partner at Bumachar Advogados Associados.
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One of Eike Batista's companies was declared bankrupt after filing for judicial recovery
Other lawsuits by Eike Batista dragged on, as is the case with the mining company MMX, created with the purpose of making the company a “mini-Vale”, which had an already complicated start to the company’s judicial recovery, partly due to the set of companies behind the shareholding constitution, typical in Group X. The company started with two processes in the Judiciary, which are running in parallel, one of them in the Court of Justice of Minas Gerais (TJ-MG) and the other in the Court of Justice of Rio (TJ-RJ).
In both processes, Eike Batista's mining company had established bankruptcy. Debts amount to approximately R$1,2 billion in the Minas lawsuit, according to the court administrator, Bernardo Bicalho.
The value of the lawsuit in Rio is lower, but they overlap, since the debts are practically the same. the railway operator MRS Logística is the company that has the most to receive. The objective, currently, is to raise the maximum amount of components with the auction of debentures that will be held this Tuesday, 16th, to pay the creditors.
Conflicting interests in Eike Batista's lawsuits
In the face of the processes of Grupo X companies, the already established controversies in bankruptcy and debt processes are driven by the iconic and media personality of Eike Batista. MMX's lawsuit at TJ-MG was highlighted because, in May 2017, the trustee obtained an authorization to “disregard the legal personality” of Eike Batista's mining company.
In a simplified way, the TJ-MG authorizes the personal assets of Eike Batista and other companies, in which the businessman had a stake in the company, were included in the process, serving to reimburse creditors.
According to Bumachar, this option has been used more in Eike Batista's judicial recovery and debt payment processes. The update of the Bankruptcy Law, approved in December 2020, clarified the possibility of accessing the personal assets of the partners of the companies mentioned in the lawsuit.
The objective is that, if the owner of a company uses the legal entity in an abusive or fraudulent way, the legal segregation that exists between the natural person of the entrepreneur and the legal person of the firm is “disregarded”, bringing to the process, the personal assets by Eike Batista.
