The Supreme Arbitration Court loses 13% of judges even before its abolition

As Kommersant has learned, yesterday at least seven senior judges of the Supreme Arbitration Court (SAC) voluntarily resigned, the abolition project of which was submitted to the State Duma by President Vladimir Putin on Monday. Mostly judges with 20 years of experience, who have the right to full compensation and a maximum lifetime salary, decided to resign. The judicial community says that most of them do not want to move to St. Petersburg and consider it humiliating to have to participate in a competition to move to the unified Supreme Court (SC).

Without waiting for the abolition of the Supreme Arbitration Court headed by Anton Ivanov, judges have already begun to leave it
Photo: Alexander Koryakov, Kommersant / buy photo

The press service of the Supreme Arbitration Court confirmed to Kommersant yesterday that seven judges submitted their resignations at once, without specifying who exactly and for what reasons. However, there are more of these statements, says a Kommersant source close to YOU. According to him, almost all representatives of the “old guard” of judges of the Supreme Arbitration Court, appointed to this position back in 1992 by the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation, resigned. According to the SAC website, it consists of ten such judges. Two of them - the chairman of the administrative judiciary, Mikhail Yukhney, as well as one of the youngest on this list, 50-year-old judge Alexander Chistyakov - did not resign, according to Kommersant's information. A number of Kommersant's sources claim that Olga Kozlova, the chairman of the judiciary for contract law, as well as judges Sergei Bondarenko, Natalya Veseneva, Lyudmila Vorontsova, Nadezhda Ksenofontova, Marina Pronina and Natalya Kharchikova are resigning. In addition, judge Alexandra Medvedeva joined the retiring judges, according to Kommersant: although she was appointed judge of the Supreme Arbitration Court only in December 2006, before that she worked for many years as the chairman of the judiciary of the Federal Arbitration Court of the Moscow District.

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Even if someone from this list still remains in their posts, almost the entire third judicial panel of the Supreme Arbitration Court, which dealt with problems of contract law - disputes about purchase and sale, transportation, loans, pledges, bank deposits, transactions, resigned in any case with securities and real estate. And considering that out of 90 judges provided for by the staffing table of the Supreme Court, only 53 vacancies are filled and another one is temporarily filled by a retired judge, this highest court is actually losing more than 13% of its judicial staff. At the same time, the abolition of the Supreme Court should occur only six months after the amendments entered into force, which will take place no earlier than the end of this year. “For YOU, such a loss of highly professional lawyers is extremely painful,” the court’s press service said.

The SAC judges were unavailable for comment. The apparatus of the High Qualification Board of Judges (HQJC), where the judges' resignations were supposed to be submitted, yesterday refused to comment, referring all questions to the head of the HQJC Nikolai Timoshin (Judge of the Supreme Court). His phone didn't answer. Interviewed members of the HQCC told Kommersant that they knew nothing about these statements, suggesting that information would most likely reach them no earlier than November, when the next meeting of the HQCC is due to take place.

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According to a Kommersant source close to the Supreme Court, the decision of the oldest judges to resign is directly related to the upcoming abolition of the Supreme Court. “These judges have been working in the arbitration system for more than 20 years. They began their careers in the USSR State Arbitration system, in 1992 they already experienced its reorganization and reassignment and do not want to go through this again,” explained Kommersant’s interlocutor. In addition, these judges did not want to move to St. Petersburg (remember that the new unified court will have to function in this city). It is not excluded in the judicial community that the subordinate heads of the Supreme Arbitration Court Anton Ivanov, given his difficult relationship with the head of the Supreme Court Vyacheslav Lebedev, do not want to come under the leadership of Mr. Lebedev, which may indirectly indicate the prospect of his appointment as chairman of the future unified court.

According to the federal law “On the Status of Judges,” a retired judge is paid severance pay based on the monthly salary for the last position for each full year of work as a judge.

In addition, upon retirement, a judge with at least 20 years of experience can receive a tax-free amount for life - 80% of the monthly remuneration of a judge working in his former position (retired judges who have not served for such a period have a lower salary and are paid to men - from 55 years old, and for women - from 50 years old).

But for judges of the abolished court, retirement is regulated differently. According to the current law, they may be offered a transfer to another court, and in case of refusal, the judge has the right “to retire on a general basis.” The law states that “in this case, he is paid compensation in the amount of 12 monthly monetary remunerations for his last position.” That is, the “golden parachute” may turn out to be significantly smaller than with voluntary resignation. In addition, according to the amendments to the Constitution proposed by Vladimir Putin, the transfer of judges of the Supreme Arbitration Court to the Supreme Court is not expected, but a multi-stage competition is envisaged. It is not yet clear whether the current judges of the Supreme Arbitration Court (as well as the Supreme Court) will have to take exams from a specially created examination commission or whether this filter will be provided only for outside candidates. In any case, veterans of the Supreme Court will be forced to receive a recommendation from the qualification board of judges (its composition is also unknown), and then from the personnel commission under the president, in which YOU are so far represented only by its chairman Anton Ivanov (see Kommersant on October 8). In any case, the amendments already introduced now provide for subsequent adjustments to the laws basic to the judicial system, including “On the Status of Judges,” so that the issue of the prospects for material support for judges of the Supreme Arbitration Court can generally be resolved fundamentally differently.

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In this situation, the decision of the representatives of the “old guard” of the Supreme Arbitration Court to resign looks logical both from a moral and material point of view, say lawyers interviewed by Kommersant. “When the Ministry of Finance several years ago proposed taxing lump sum payments to retiring judges, many judges in different regions hastened to resign, not relying on the development of the situation, although in the end the project was never adopted,” recalls one of Kommersant’s interlocutors "in the judicial community.

Kirill Trukhanov, head of the arbitration group at the Vegas Lex law firm, believes that the resigned judges “simply do not see themselves in the new system, in the new court.” “They are accustomed to the effective system of arbitration courts, which was created by Veniamin Yakovlev and was finalized under Anton Ivanov,” says Mr. Trukhanov. “The new system does not seem to be a boon for the consideration of commercial disputes, so on the part of these judges, resignation is a logical step.” .

Anna Zanina; Anna Pushkarskaya, St. Petersburg

The judges decided not to wait