The guard is tired

Bailiffs are seeking staff expansion

Bailiffs are ready to resist the transfer of their service from the Ministry of Justice to the jurisdiction of the judges whom they protect and whose decisions they execute. The service's management is confident that all judges' complaints can be removed by increasing funding and staff. Director of the Federal Bailiff Service Nikolai Vinnichenko proved his usefulness in its current form yesterday with numbers.

The service recovered 86.9 billion rubles for the nine months of this year. According to him, the bailiffs had more than 17.9 million enforcement proceedings in the amount of 954.9 billion rubles. “Of these, 11.6 million enforcement proceedings have been completed, or 65% of the total,” Mr. Vinnichenko noted.

However, the victorious reports of the bailiffs do not impress citizens. Judge of the European Court of Human Rights from Russia Anatoly Kovler admitted that it is the non-execution of court decisions that is most often complained about in Strasbourg. There are no less problems with the security of courts, although, according to Nikolai Vinnichenko, today security is provided for 100% of arbitration court buildings, 97.9% of general jurisdiction court buildings and 58.2% of separate court areas of magistrates. Nevertheless, judges have plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied with their guards. So, in June, in the Primorsky Court of St. Petersburg, one of the defendants - a former employee of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate - detonated a grenade after the verdict was announced. As a result, one person was killed and 11 were injured. And escapes from the courtroom have long ceased to be a rarity.

Judges have long proposed transferring bailiffs to their jurisdiction. Moreover, at the end of September, at a meeting of the Chairman of the Supreme Court Vyacheslav Lebedev with representatives of Business Russia, it was discussed that initially the laws “On Enforcement Proceedings” and “On Bailiffs” provided for the creation of this service within the judicial system. But, as Mr. Lebedev complained, government officials threatened: if the new service is not subordinated to the Ministry of Justice, these necessary laws will not be adopted.

The bailiffs themselves acknowledge the criticism, but would prefer not to leave the “walls” of the Ministry of Justice. According to Nikolai Vinnichenko, the low level of execution of court decisions and insufficient security of courts are due only to the small number of the service. “Bailiffs work with a workload that is four to five times higher than normal. The protection of more than five thousand courts is carried out by 15 thousand bailiffs, that is, three people per court, while at least 80 thousand people are required,” Mr. Vinnichenko complained. So far, there is an agreement with the Ministry of Finance on a gradual increase in the number of employees by 20 thousand.

Yuri KOLESOV