Fraudulent Conveyance of Co-operative Shares and Apportionment of Litigation Costs

Creditors filed a fraudulent conveyance action (Paulianische Anfechtung) under Art. 285 ff. SchKG against two defendants concerning the undervalued sale of co-operative shares, which represented an interest in a key real estate asset previously owned by the debtor. The court reasoned that the share transfers were indeed disadvantageous to the creditors' execution rights, confirming that co-operative shares are generally subject to seizure and that the transaction's economic substance was the sale of a significant portion of the underlying property value for less than what could have been obtained. While affirming the substantive liability of the defendants to compensate the creditors for the loss due to the avoidance of the initial transfer, the court partly adjusted the cost ruling, determining that the defendants, as simple joint parties (einfache Streitgenossen) who conducted their defense separately without objective necessity, were entitled to only one party compensation award in the first instance, leading to a partial success for the creditors' cross-appeal regarding costs.