Legal Regulation of Redemption Leasing

This paper is devoted to the most topical problems of redemption leasing legal regulation, which is the most useful type of financial leasing contract in the Russian Federation. This problem has been remaining to be indeterminate, because legislator and court practice has different stances toward it. On the one hand, the Civil Code of the Russian Federation expresses the traditional leasing theory of financial leasing contract. So it means that redemption leasing contract should be considered as a mixed agreement. On the other hand, the Superior Commercial Court of the Russian Federation proceeded from the credit theory of redemption leasing. The current practice of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is quite contradictory. In this paper this is a credit theory of redemption leasing which is advocated by author de lege ferenda. Besides theoretic arguments, which are generally based on the economic nature of this contract, author gives some particular examples which support the efficiency of credit theory application: mutual parties’ calculations in the case of contract termination, secured nature of lessor’s property right, transfer of risk of accidental loss, liability of the parties. Key words: financial lease contract, redemption lease contract, leasing, financing, secured nature of property right, pledge, risk of accidental loss, contract termination, mutual parties’ calculations, liability of lessor, lessee and seller.