ST.-PETERSBURG, April 17 - RAPSI. The St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region Commercial Court has registered Sberbank's lawsuit against Cargo JFC (part of the JFC group) to recover $47.4 million of debt.

The trial date has yet to be set. JFC, the head company of the group, has been brought into the case as third party. It went into administration in March.
According to JFC, Cargo JFC, like Bonanza International, whose bankruptcy case is scheduled for hearing on May 15, acted as borrowers under a syndicated loan facility of up to $88 million and 1.5 billion rubles ($51 million).

The loan agreement was approved by an extraordinary meeting of JFC shareholders on March 9, 2011. The loan arrangers included Raiffeisenbank, Sberbank, Amsterdam Trade Bank, UniCredit Bank and Banque Societe Generale Vostok.

Raiffeisenbank and Sberbank have requested a commercial court to have their claims entered into the JFC schedule of creditors. The court records have not yet specified the debt amount that these creditors want to be included in the registry.

JFC faced severe financial trouble due to the turmoil on international markets, as major fruit suppliers went bankrupt as a result of the Arab Spring, among other reasons.

JFC reported earlier that it sold up to 30 percent of its products to southern Mediterranean countries and sustained substantial losses in 2011 due to disrupted business relations, market share loss and unrecoverable debts.

Established in St. Petersburg in 1994, the JFC Group comprises fruit production, procurement, storage, transportation and sales companies. According to JFC, it is the largest fruit supplier to the Russian market.