ROC: Property arrest - legal arbitrariness

The arrest of property of the Russian Orthodox Church will be a manifestation of "legal arbitrariness." According to Interfax, this was stated by the head of the Department of the Moscow Patriarchate of Foreign Institutions, Archbishop Yegoryevsky Mark.

“With surprise, he took such news, any sane person understands that the church in Russia is separated from the state, this is written mainly by the law of our country. Any lawyer understands that these are different subjects, and the state is legally unrelated to the Russian Orthodox Church. What was voiced either legal illiteracy or legal arbitrariness,” the archbishop said.

According to him, "there is the desire of some people to cover with mud everything that is associated with Russia and is called" Russian "," Russian ", and therefore the Russian Orthodox Church appears, which is a separate legal entity and is not connected with the state."

"The Moscow Patriarchate in different countries unites completely different people. If we talk about the same Belgium, then in Belgium the Russian Orthodox Church visit and are its members not only by Russians, but also Ukrainians, Belarusians, Moldavians," the agency’s interlocutor noted.

On June 17, the Belgian office of the bailiffs Marc Sacré, Stefan Sacré & Piet de Smet arrested the property of all Russian institutions in the country, with the exception of diplomatic missions.

The arrest was made on the basis of the decision of the Belgian Arbitration Court of July 18, 2014 at the suit of Yukos Universal Limited, registered on the island of Maine - Autonomy as part of the UK. The court ordered Russia to pay a subsidiary of Yukos 1.6 billion euros.

Among the institutions whose property was arrested are representative offices of the Russian media, as well as the archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church Brussels and Belgian. All these organizations must, within two weeks of time, declare the money that they have, the property of the Russian Federation and debts to it.

As the bailiffs explained, the arrest is made, because the "daughter of the" Yukos "has serious fears regarding the possibility of obtaining the amount due to him, in particular, due to the systematic refusal of the Russian Federation, to execute the court decisions against it and taking into account the attitude of the Russian Federation to this decision."