4.  The applicants, whose years of birth are summarised in the Appendix, live in Troitsko-Pechorsk of the Komi Republic.
5.  They were municipal unitary enterprise employees working for “Troitsko-Pechorskoye ZhKKh” («МУП «Троицко-Печерское ЖКХ», “the company”) in the Komi Republic.
6.  The company was set up in 2003 in accordance with a decision of Head of the Troitsko-Pechorskiy District (“the district administration”) as a commercial organisation performing the following activities, among others: renovation and maintenance of the municipal housing stock; heating and water supply to the district population and enterprises; maintenance of the sewage systems; maintenance services in respect of municipal housing and adjacent territories; and providing real estate registration services in the Troitsko-Pechorskiy District. In order to carry out its statutory activities, the company had “the right of economic control” (право хозяйственного ведения) over the assets allocated to it by the town administration (see Liseytseva and Maslov v. Russia, nos. 39483/05 and 40527/10, §§ 55-75, 9 October 2014 for further details on the company’s status).
7.  In 2004-2006 the district administration withdrew the company’s several assets, including “housing and objects of the engineering infrastructure” and transferred them to the municipal district treasury.
8.  On the dates tabulated in the Appendix below the Justice of the Peace of the Troitsko‑Pechorskiy Court Circuit of the Komi Republic by separate judgments and court writs ordered the company to pay the applicants salary arrears. On the dates listed in the Appendix the awards became enforceable.
9.  It appears from the parties’ observations of 2011 that Ms Lyubas (application no. 10742/09) obtained at least two other judgments in her favour which had been issued on 22 June and 2 November 2007 against the debtor enterprise.
10.  Between April 2007 and September 2008 some applicants received the amounts specified in the “enforcement status” column of the Appendix. The Government submitted, without further details, that Ms Lyubas was paid 56,021 Russian roubles pursuant to unspecified domestic judicial decisions in her favour. Ms Lyubas, interviewed in the domestic proceedings, maintained that the award of 21 December 2006 had not been paid to her.
11.  On 11 December 2006 the supervision procedure was put in place in respect of the company. On 14 May 2007 the Commercial Court of the Komi Republic declared the company insolvent and the liquidation proceedings commenced.
12.  At some point before 9 November 2007 the prosecutor’s office conducted an inquiry and, having analysed the manner of the assets’ withdrawal and transfer by the owner, concluded that the owner’s actions contained elements of deliberate bankruptcy. It appears that at some point the prosecutor’s office refused to open criminal proceedings on account of the alleged deliberate bankruptcy of the company. In November 2007 the prosecutor’s office also held an inquiry into the liquidator’s actions, found that she had acted in compliance with the domestic law and refused to bring administrative proceedings against her.
13.  During the insolvency proceedings the liquidator lodged numerous actions on the company’s behalf claiming, inter alia, unpaid communal charges from local population. The amount recovered proved insufficient to settle all creditors’ claims.
14.  At some point the liquidator lodged an action on the company’s behalf against the district administration under Article 56 § 3 (subsidiary liability) of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation. He argued that the insolvency of the company had been caused by the administration. He submitted that, as a result of a series of the asset transfers in 2004-2006, the company had become unable to meet the creditors’ claims and to continue to carry out its statutory goals.
15.  On 3 March 2010 the Federal Commercial Court of the Volgo‑Vyatskiy Circuit rejected the claim in the cassation instance, and on 12 July 2010 the Supreme Commercial Court refused to accept for examination a request for supervisory review of that judgment. The domestic courts at all instances accepted that the assets had indeed been transferred from the company’s economic control to the district treasury. However, they found no evidence that the insolvency had been caused by the owner’s actions. In particular, after the withdrawal of assets the company still had been able to meet the creditors’ claims. The housing and objects of the engineering infrastructure on 30 January 2006 had been withdrawn “in order to apply the housing policy” and to “reduce the company’s expenses for the maintenance of the infrastructure objects”. In particular, the Ministry of Architecture and Communal Services of the Komi Republic had recommended the municipalities to withdraw objects of housing and engineering infrastructure from unitary enterprises in order to optimise taxes of housing and communal services providers. Finally, even though at the insolvency stage the company proved unable to meet the creditors’ claims, the claimant had failed to demonstrate that the owner “knew or ought to have known that [the transfer of the assets] would have led to the company’s insolvency”.
16.   On 28 December 2011 the Commercial Court of the Komi Republic ordered the respondent company’s liquidation. Creditors’ claims which had not been satisfied during the liquidation procedure due to the debtor’s shortage of funds, including the applicant’s claims, were considered as settled. On the same date the liquidation was recorded in the Register of Legal Entities, and the company ceased to exist. The judgments in the applicants’ favour have remained unenforced either in full or in part, as indicated in a relevant part of the Appendix below.