Cases under the bridge

Russian Constitutional Court allowed detectives to close cases once statute of limitations had passed, without defendants’ consent. Who wins from this?

The public has not heard about the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in a while. All the complaints on citizens’ rights being violated related to the limitations introduced after the start of the "special operation" first have to pass all the stages in courts of general jurisdiction. It is unlikely that these cases will end up at the Constitutional Court before next year. It is also highly unlikely that anyone there is impatiently waiting for them to come. Meanwhile, all the other high-level government agencies only have the "special operation" on their agenda, so the Court’s relative silence makes it seem as if it does not exist at all.

The reason for the Constitutional Court’s recent appearance in the media is its decision on Vyacheslav Rudnikov’s complaint, which was made without conducting a court session and published on 18 July. After the decision had been published on the Court’s website, some analysts interpreted it as a limitation of the investigation deadlines and prerogatives, as if the decision had been made in favour of the plaintiff, but that is not entirely true.

Rudnikov is known for founding LTD Sputnik, which focused on creating a search engine of the same name. In 2014, 0.01% of Russian Internet users were aware of it. The LTD eventually went bankrupt; its founder, however, ended up being a person of interest in a criminal fraud case: the case was related not to Sputnik but to Rudnikov's Moscow real estate operations.

Rudnikov claims that the case was a part of a raider seizure, which is not hard to believe: the investigation never presented any evidence of his guilt, and the case was sent back to the prosecutor’s office by the court three times. But in 2019, the statute of limitations (ten years) on criminal prosecution under article 159 of the Criminal Code ran out. Rudnikov has contested and keeps contesting the dismissal of the case due to the statute of limitations, seeing as this reason is not counted for exoneration, and, allegedly, does not give him the right to receive compensation for wrongful prosecution. Not having received the defendant’s consent to the case being dismissed, the investigator had extended the investigation deadlines several times, even though there was no point in it any longer.

We used the word “allegedly” in the previous paragraph because the Constitutional Court made a different decision. It demanded that the legislator cancel a clause on the defendant’s consent being necessary in such cases in part 2 of article 27 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Court ruled that if the case had not gone to trial, it was to be terminated within a year after the statute of limitations had passed, no matter what. Before these changes to the Code, the Constitutional Court had allowed investigators a “delay” from three months to a year for closing dragged out cases, the “delays” depending on the gravity of the crime.

And what about the compensation, which is awarded indisputably only when a case is dismissed due to lack of evidence or offence? This issue, according to the Constitutional Court, should be decided separately, under article 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure on legal process of challenging investigator’s actions.

One could hardly say that this was a win for Rudnikov and many others facing similar situations during so-called economic court cases.

They will now have to appeal due to cases being dismissed on non-rehabilitating grounds; the general courts, which do not have the jurisdiction to change the Code with its verdicts, in best case scenario, will cancel the termination of such cases by investigators; the investigators will, then, close the cases once again, and so on. It will not become easier to obtain compensation for those who were persecuted and, often, even spent time in pre-trial detention centres. And the entire time this process goes on, these people will have to reply yes in questionnaires when asked if they had ever been charged with a criminal offence.