They came for friends

The Constitutional Court allowed the confiscation of property from familiar corrupt officials. What threatens ordinary Russians?

The Constitutional Court recognized as legitimate the seizure in favor of the state of property from everyone who will not be able to prove the legality of its acquisition - including relatives and acquaintances of corrupt officials. In other words, if a person lives out of means, and even once friends with the hero of the next corruption scandal, then most likely his property will be taken and transferred to the state budget. Unless, of course, he cannot prove in court where he got the money for a beautiful life.

The decision that the valuable assets of friends of corrupt officials can be confiscated, the Constitutional Court made after the roommate of the former colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Dmitry Zakharchenko, convicted for 12.5 years for bribes, complained that she and other relatives of the ex-colonel took their property illegally. It, according to the court, did not correspond to their income. Recall that in 2017, the Nikulinsky court of Moscow confiscated real estate and cars for a total of 9 billion rubles.

A similar story happened with the family of the FSB Colonel Kirill Cherkalin, who is accused of bribery and large -scale fraud. Cherkalin purchased apartments, houses, cars and registered it for his relatives. Cherkalin was arrested, property was taken away.

During the court hearing, which also considered the issue of transferring to the state treasury of his assets worth more than 6.3 billion rubles, the father of Cherkalin and his civilian wife and the mother -in -law were outraged that they bought three apartments and a house on Rublevskoye Shosse, adding only the money allegedly received. The court considered their arguments illogical and turned everything into the state’s revenue.

“The story of the seizure of the property of corrupt officials is a link that does not reach the Russian legal system for a long time,” said Ilya Shumanov, Deputy General Director of Transparency International. - In fact [this is the decision] - a kind of surrogate that is missing in the Russian Criminal Code of the article on illegal enrichment. We are talking about article 20 of the UN Convention, which Russia has not ratified. Accordingly, we do not have an article on illegal enrichment, when, if it is impossible to confirm the sources of the origin of property from him or close relatives, his money is seized, and the official is prosecuted. We do not have such a norm, and now the Prosecutor General’s Office sees the property through its own tools, through court decisions. ”

What is the catch? Until today, the law limited the circle of persons whose property could be removed if its owners cannot explain how it appeared. This applies to officials and closest members of their families - spouses and minor children. It turns out that the Constitutional Court formulated a provision that is not in the law. There is no norm to extend control over the costs of officials to a wider circle of people than the closest members of the family of an official-corruption official.

Now, in fact, this list is almost limitless, and any Russian can turn out to be almost unlimited, and such “familiar corrupt officials”, if law enforcement agencies.

“The authorities often do not pay attention to real corrupt officials, these are the necessary people. At the same time, the acquaintance of the one who is not pleased, can be each of us. The circle of acquaintances can be determined arbitrarily. This position of the Constitutional Court cannot but cause alertness, ”says Ilya Shablinsky, a leading researcher and deputy head of the constitutional and administrative law of the Higher School of Economics.

There is a chance that this decision will be applied extremely selectively to real corrupt officials. On November 11, the Corruption Fund for the opposition policy of Alexei Navalny published a new investigation about the Moscow prosecutor, which also provided data on giant assets. These managers are quite suitable for the definition of a “familiar corrupt official”. However, there was no reaction of the authorities to this.

Therefore, this is unlikely to help the exposure of selfish officials. But it will help the security forces get new pressure levers.

“I am sure that there will be abuses,” says lawyer Konstantin Rivkin. -It is difficult for us to find a real imperative norm that law enforcement officers would not use to knock out something from our customers: to force them to do something, to share a business, someone to give conference that is not true. I have no illusions on this score. I think that this is an instrument of global practice, but the whole trouble is that many institutions that exist in the West when they switch to Russian soil turn to their opposite. And in the hands of our law enforcement, this can be turned into a horror story. ”

Experts clarify that there is another problem: to prove the fact that a person received money in a legal way and bought an apartment on them is very difficult, and the court in controversial situations will always take the side of the security forces. And the law, which states how and on what signs it can be confirmed that a person stores property bought for the money of the accused of corruption.

There is a dilemma: the law enforcement agencies will say that they simply found the hidden money of the corrupt official, and the person who considered him acquaintances will unsuccessfully prove that this is his personal funds.

Nobody can guarantee that the new decision of the Constitutional Court will not lead to arbitrariness. According to Ilya Shablinsky, amendments to the law in the Code of Criminal Procedure could solve the problem in which it is necessary to carefully prescribe the mechanisms of its application. However, this is a very large and serious job for legislators, but whether anyone will do it, it is not clear. It is obvious that without this the decision of the Constitutional Court can become fatal, because, Ilya Shumanov adds, opponents of the political system may be hit, from which, using a new tool, they will begin to select property.