| The Supreme Court denied a motorist the right to use a “broken” car The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation yesterday did not allow vehicles with broken identification numbers to be registered. This decision was made at the request of a citizen who insisted that registering cars only with natural changes and corrosion of these numbers in the presence of a refusal to initiate a criminal case is unlawful. According to the applicant, this violates the private property rights guaranteed by the Constitution of tens of thousands of citizens who “in good faith” purchase cars whose identification numbers have been interrupted. Representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Justice, in turn, argued that the abolition of this clause of the registration rules would cause a surge in car thefts.
Muscovite Alexander Makaridin was prompted to contact the Supreme Court by a situation that seemed ordinary at first glance. He bought a VAZ-2115 at a car market in Lyubertsy near Moscow, but was unable to register it. As his representative Alexey Samoilov explained in court yesterday, the vehicle passport (PTS) of this car was on the wanted list. Despite the fact that the police refused to initiate a criminal case, the traffic police did not register the car, citing the relevant rules approved by order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Indeed, one of the paragraphs of the Rules for the registration of motor vehicles and trailers for them states that “registration actions with vehicles that have signs of changes in the markings applied to them due to natural wear and corrosion are carried out on the basis of decisions to refuse to initiate a criminal case and expert opinions, confirming this change." Mr. Makaridin tried to declare this point illegal yesterday.
“This clause violates the private property rights of tens of thousands of unfortunate buyers, provided for by the Civil Code and the Constitution, who, being bona fide purchasers, are faced with the fact that they are denied registration for some reason for which criminal cases have not been initiated. It turns out that the buyer legally owns the property, but cannot use or dispose of it,” Mr. Samoilov explained the position of his client. According to him, besides natural wear and tear and corrosion, there are countless other reasons for which criminal cases are not initiated, but for some reason the rules are silent about this. “If there is no crime, there are no claims from third parties, then the owner of the car should receive a registration certificate,” said Mr. Samoilov, in his opinion, registration actions should be carried out only on the basis of a refusal to initiate a criminal case, and thus “justice will be restored.”
But the police have a different view of justice. “You are protecting the rights of the applicant. What about the rights of car owners whose cars were stolen, including through murder? What about their rights? asked the representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Supreme Court, Hayk Maryan. Judge Vladimir Zaitsev also got involved. “You say that the matter concerns tens of thousands of citizens, but in this case we are talking only about your principal. What actually happened to his car?” he asked. But Mr. Samoilov did not know the details of the criminal history of the Zhiguli. “This is a dark question,” he said. At the same time, his client did not appeal the actions of the traffic police officers either to a higher authority or in court. He also did not take advantage of the opportunity provided to him by the Law “On the Protection of Consumer Rights” to return the car to the sellers and collect the money.
But representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs spoke about what actually happened to the ill-fated car when assessing Mr. Makaridin’s claims. Mr. Maryan explained to the court that traffic police officers do not have the right to register cars with altered license plates, because they have already been registered once - in the name of the person from whom the car was stolen. “If a criminal car, even if it is a bona fide purchaser, is registered, then the rights of its previous legal owner are violated,” said a representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In addition, he emphasized that the same rules prohibit the registration of cars that show signs of concealment, alteration and destruction of markings, as well as forgery of documents, registration plates and other violations. And the contested provision of the rules, according to Mr. Maryan, regulates only cases of natural wear and corrosion and does not apply to anything else. “Not only a bona fide purchaser, but also the one who stole the car can apply to the traffic police with such a requirement for registration in order to later legalize it,” said Mr. Maryan. He also noted that traffic police officers cannot allow such cars to be used, since there are doubts about their safety, because It is not known for certain where exactly they were collected.
The head of the legal department of the Traffic Safety Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Yuri Shakirov, told the court that the information about the purchased VAZ-2115 car that Mr. Makaridin gave “does not correspond to reality.” According to experts, the car's body number and engine number were altered, and the marking plate was forged. But the title was genuine, but it belonged to a completely different car, which had long been registered in the North-Western district of the capital. And Makaridin’s Zhiguli is a so-called “double car.” And they refused to initiate a criminal case only on the basis that there was no corpus delicti in the actions of Makaridin himself. Moreover, it turned out that when buying a car on the market in Lyubertsy, the purchase and sale agreement was concluded between Makaridin, on the one hand, and certain Mr. Petrov and Mrs. Aleshina, who do not exist in nature. “If we satisfy Makaridin’s application and allow the registration of cars only on the basis of refusal to initiate a criminal case, then this will open the door to dishonest people and the percentage of stolen vehicles will increase significantly,” Mr. Shakirov said.
“What if the owner’s car was stolen, the license plates were changed, and then the criminals were caught and the car was returned to the car owner? How can a car be used again if it cannot be registered a second time? And such situations arise all the time,” Judge Zaitsev asked representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. “This problem is being solved,” Mr. Shakirov immediately responded. “Further operation of such a machine is carried out by making appropriate changes to the registration documents.”
After listening to the parties, Judge Vladimir Zaitsev made a decision: “To refuse the application.”
This case is not the first time that registration rules have been challenged in court due to the fact that their complexity allegedly causes inconvenience to “bona fide purchasers.” Thus, at the end of July of this year, the Supreme Court considered an application from citizens who demanded that car owners, after selling their cars, be allowed not to deregister them themselves, but to transfer this responsibility to buyers. But police officers believe that in this way car thieves can easily remove and register stolen cars. Then the Supreme Court also agreed with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and rejected the application. Ekaterina BUTORINA |
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