| Bailiffs quarrel with prosecutors Bailiffs named yesterday the worst debtors to the budget. These are 168 enterprises that were taken under special control by the chief bailiff, Deputy Minister of Justice of Russia Arkady Melnikov. The blacklist, he said, includes those who owe the state more than 100 million rubles. The record holder here is the Rostov joint-stock company Gukovugol - the size of its tax debt is off the charts at 4 billion. Among those who were fined are other well-known companies, for example, ZIL (over 1.6 billion), Moskvich (1.2 billion) and KamAZ (over 400 million rubles) Mr. Melnikov hopes that, together with the tax debt department of the Ministry of Taxation, enforcement proceedings against the largest debtors will be able to be completed - of course, if the bailiffs are helped by other law enforcement agencies.
Over the six years of its existence, the bailiff service of the Ministry of Justice itself has become a real power structure: it includes 442 thousand employees, of which 14 thousand are specially trained fighters. True, the chief bailiff claims that it is becoming less and less common to use armed force against malicious debtors. “Employees are even forbidden to wear masks,” says Mr. Melnikov. - There is no need to break windows and break down doors. Where officials do not comply with a court decision, we simply warn them, then impose a fine and only the second time initiate a criminal case.”
With or without masks, over the past year, bailiffs collected more than 75 billion rubles from debtors. in favor of the state, legal entities and individuals. Thanks to their efforts, the Russian budget received 25.7 billion. It could have been more, the chief bailiff believes, if the Russian Federal Property Fund had worked better. The bailiffs transferred 10 billion worth of seized property to the Russian Federal Property Fund, but the fund sold only a fifth.
Related departments generally interfere with the work of bailiffs: police officers, for example, do not share with them their data on the property of debtors, although, according to Mr. Melnikov, they have comprehensive information on this topic. The bailiffs have to find out for themselves who actually owns what, and this is not always possible. For a third of debtors, enforcement proceedings have to be stopped because it turns out that they do not own anything - although in fact this is not always true. Meanwhile, according to the chief bailiff, 130 billion rubles remained uncollected - due to the termination of cases - that is, twice as much as what was nevertheless managed to be recovered.
But the sharpest criticism of the chief bailiff turned out to be directed not against the Russian Federal Property Fund or the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but against the prosecutor’s office. According to Arkady Melnikov, the prosecutor's office everywhere interferes with the work of his service. In some Russian regions, local prosecutors generally seized enforcement proceedings from bailiffs, although this does not fall within their competence. Mr. Melnikov believes that local prosecutors often act in concert with malicious debtors and exert psychological pressure on bailiffs, and sometimes even initiate criminal cases against them.
Responding in absentia to the attack of the Justice Ministry's bailiff service, the prosecutor's office yesterday also spoke very unflatteringly about it: according to Deputy Prosecutor General Yuri Biryukov, the bailiffs work “disgracefully.” Mr. Biryukov added that the prosecutor’s office recently checked the activities of the bailiff service in all regions of the Russian Federation and identified gross violations of legislation and citizens’ rights. According to the prosecutor's office, the bailiffs have nothing to be proud of at all: over the past few years they have collected only a tenth of what they should have collected in favor of the state. Ivan SUKHOV |
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