The High Commercial Court has dismissed a complaint filed by members of Agrokor's temporary creditors' council and upheld a Commercial Court ruling saying that it is Agrokor's emergency administrator and not the temporary creditors' council that has the right to appoint consultants in the process of emergency administration in the company.

The High Commercial Court said in its decision that the Commercial Court quashed the temporary creditors’ council decision of April 13 instructing the emergency administrator hire, apart from consultants of his own choice, additional foreign and domestic financial and legal experts to advise the temporary creditors’ council and answer to it, who would be paid from regular operations in the process of crisis administration.

The temporary creditors’ council had also asked that the emergency administrator sign contracts with those advisors.

The Commercial Court ruled that the council does not have the legal powers for such a decision and that in the process of crisis administration each creditor had to cover their own costs of the process.

Council members Kras, Toni Raic, Sberbank of Russia, Knighthead Capital Management and Zagrebacka Banka appealed against this ruling, but the High Commercial Court found the appeal unfounded.

The High Commercial Court said that the decision made by the temporary creditors’ council was not within its remit and that the Law on Emergency Administration in Systemic Companies did not envisage the appointment of consultants to the temporary creditors’ council.

Also, the crisis administrator is the only body in the process of crisis administration that can choose a consultant for restructuring and, if necessary, auditors, legal and other advisors, the High Commercial Court said.

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