What are the risks of a poorly functioning Federal Bailiff Service in a downturn in the economy

With an outbreak of bankruptcies - both businesses and individuals, will we slide into bandit methods?

Julia Suntsova

According to the official reporting of the Federal Bailiff Service, in the first quarter of 2022, only 14.9% of the total number of enforcement proceedings were collected. If we measure the effectiveness by the amounts actually collected, then we fall to 3% of the total amount of debt required for collection.

At the same time, it should be understood that these figures are only a summary indicator. Bailiffs show particular zeal when collecting debts in favor of the state - tax debts, traffic police fines, customs payments. When it comes to private or corporate interests, the service can be said to be inactive.

The effectiveness of recovery, for example, from individuals, individual entrepreneurs and legal entities in favor of individuals is only 3%, the execution of recovery from damages from crimes is 0.3%, maintenance payments are 7.1%.

For many years now, the level of debt collection by bailiffs continues to remain at a critically low level. We are talking about more than a hundred million unfulfilled proceedings with overdue debts, for legal entities alone - more than 6 trillion rubles.

In 2020, 110,872,811 enforcement proceedings were under execution at the Federal Bailiff Service of the Russian Federation, and their number continued the long-term growth trend. For 11 months of 2021, the total number of enforcement proceedings reached almost 113 million.

Russian citizens try to collect 113 million debts from their debtors every year, and, frankly, few people succeed. A real time bomb.

In most cases, the bailiffs simply stop the enforcement proceedings under Art. 46 of the Law on Enforcement Proceedings in connection with the “impossibility of recovery”.

It is often due to the inaction of the bailiffs that the debtors manage to remove, hide and rewrite the property, at the expense of which it would be possible to pay off the debts, or build legal protection mechanisms, after which the property cannot be recovered from the debtor, even if he has it.

The hardest thing is to make bailiffs work for individuals. The most exhausting and insulting thing in this story is that people cannot achieve justice in any way, even after going through the courts and winning them. There is a writ of execution, but there is no return of the debt. But for many citizens, these tests cost a lot of money and several years spent on litigation.

"Today bailiffs are one of the biggest legal problems. If a few years ago there was corruption in the judiciary, then this was practically obsolete, then there was a struggle for the purity of the law enforcement and investigative system, and they also more or less coped. But the inefficiency of the executive body, as it was, remains intact. The fight against manifestations of corruption somehow bypassed the service of bailiffs - this is an oasis, if not the 90s, then something like that. We need systematic work and amendments to the legislation. But all around is silence and the groan of those who cannot achieve anything. But the biggest bewilderment is why the service does not fulfill its function and no one asks them?", - says Doctor of Law, President of the Russian Union of Lawyers Igor Trunov.

As a result, the service of bailiffs for certain categories of penalties, for example, compensation for illegal dismissals, alimony, has already become a classic weapon of rich people.

The sale of property on account of debts is generally a separate large corruption system. How this property is sold, at what prices, what "lateral" companies are involved in this, then another swamp for those who want to warm their hands. Are there any branches in the service of bailiffs that create muddy water?..

"If you won something from a rich man, then get it through the bailiffs - hmm, it immediately becomes ridiculous. I am a practicing lawyer and I understand that in the current reality the chances for justice are illusory. This service is not aimed at the weak, the poor, the socially vulnerable. However, this is not only for bailiffs. In the FSIN system, for example, if a convict has debts to the victim and the state, everything is shaken out in favor of the state, and you can completely forget about the victim". Investigation Commitee is also monetary oriented, Trunov adds.

At the state level, there has been a discussion for several years about how to transfer this atrophied function of the state (collection of debts) to collectors and other “partners”, which in fact means the recognition of the department’s own helplessness and inefficiency.

"It is almost impossible to attract a bailiff for inaction or negligence. In order to prove that an official could, but did not, make every possible effort to collect the debt, the collector needs to temporarily become a “operative” himself and search for the debtor's property. Even if it is possible to prove the negligence of the bailiff, in most cases he is threatened with ...a non-binding order. The measure is absolutely empty, since no one stays in this service for a long time, this work is rather considered as temporary, without building any special career plans, therefore one less prescription, one more - no difference. Bailiffs are a self-contained system, which is almost impossible to somehow influence, turn to face people", - says lawyer Oleg Titov.

It is probably difficult to find a service that has turned its back on a person more than the Federal Bailiff Service did.

Few of the state organizations allow themselves to simply not receive phone calls to official numbers. “Call? What are you, it’s useless”, the prosecutors answer in the duty office, when you come to complain about the bailiffs for the umpteenth time. Yandex reviews are full of comments about how for months people cannot get through to their bailiffs, even if fines and penalties are issued to them erroneously.

Why are there so few professionals in the Federal Bailiff Service?

The number of employees of enforcement agencies is 39,587 people (2020 data). Thus, the main bailiff-performer accounts for 2800 enforcement proceedings per year. Working hours per year with a 40-hour week - 1,979 working hours. Thus, the bailiff can spend no more than 42 minutes on conducting one enforcement proceeding.

How is the bailiff looking for accounts today? He only has speculation about the banks where the debtor might open an account. He sends requests to these banks. In a good way, the request should be sent to a single center, from where he can get an answer: such and such a citizen has the following accounts. The tax authorities are most aware of this issue. The bailiffs should first of all closely cooperate with the Federal Tax Service on the search for real estate, accounts, and other incomes of citizens. Not a certificate of wages should be the basis of the writ of execution, as is the case now. The very mechanism of searching for a citizen's income should become different, experts say.

- Let's go, say, to the office bailiffs in Yekaterinburg. The building is located in the very center of the city. Climbing the stairs, you feel hopeless and lack of money. It's impossible to call. It remains unclear, is it really impossible to make a single call center available from the first call. Is it possible that those who sit on penalties and search for funds do not even have enough of these funds even for their technical equipment? We got up. An attendant sits at an old table. He checks your documents and tells who and where to go. The corridors are crowded with people. Everything they think about those who are on the other side of the door is already written on their faces. Here we are not talking about some kind of electronic record, convenience for visitors and employees. The people are angry , - says the head of the committee for assessing the regulatory impact of the All-Russian public organization "Business Russia" Alexey Golovchenko.

The quality of the work of bailiffs also remains at an extremely low level.

The line that pops up first when filling out the complaint form on the FSSP website "I'm a double!" That is, most often citizens complain that they were credited with the debt of their doubles by full name.

Since not all of these millions of citizens survive the heart-rending quests "get through to the bailiff", many decide to use an electronic appointment appointment. The procedure itself is also not for the faint of heart. Judging by the descriptions of the regulations on the FSSP website, in order to get an appointment, you need to collect a package of documents, a certificate for a coupon, a coupon for a certificate, a certificate of receipt of a coupon for a certificate of a coupon, and that's it.

“You can make an appointment for a specific date on one issue only once a day <…> The appointment time is booked only if all the required fields are filled in, the date and time of the appointment are selected and the button "Make an appointment" is pressed. The booking service is online. The time slots offered to you for selection may be considered and occupied by other applicants at the same time. In this case, you will be asked to choose a different appointment time When booking an appointment, a confirmation ticket is generated, which indicates the information you entered, the date, time and reason for contacting. If the email address field is filled in correctly, a copy of the confirmation coupon will be sent to the specified address. During the appointment by appointment at the booked time, you must present documents confirming the information you specified during the appointment. The presence of a confirmation coupon is desirable.

In general, while you go through the bureaucratic triathlon, you will already forget why you went there at all. But these are still flowers.

When you press the “last button”, it turns out that the entry is made only through the ESIA system (Official Internet Portal of Public Services, 2022), which “issues a coupon” only if you are granted access rights to a whole list of your personal data, including:

• view your email address
• Viewing your mobile phone number
• Viewing your TIN
• View your date of birth
• View your last name, first name, and middle name
• Viewing your SNILS.

"By clicking Submit, you authorize this information system to use the specified data in accordance with its terms and conditions", - the note says.

It is not possible to make an appointment without providing these details!

Not an appointment, but a fairy tale for the bailiff. He went to complain about an erroneously issued fine, and along the way left all his personal data about himself to the bailiff. Suddenly need, so to speak ...

- The problem of non-execution of court decisions is not new: bailiffs really work selectively, depending on the amount of debt, the solvency of the debtor and the integrity of the bailiff. The statistics on malfeasance of bailiffs are impressive... Over the years of impunity, debtors have also become quite "qualified": they have no property, they live in other people's apartments, they do not have an official salary, or it is too small to pay off the debt.

Debtors' funds are written off in a semi-automatic mode: during the day, the debtor manages to make several payments through his cards before they would be written off in favor of the creditor or the Federal Bailiff Service, says forensic expert Anton Palyulin, managing partner of the Palyulin and Partners law office.

In 2019, we recall, they already tried to reform the Bailiff Service. The changes, in essence, were aimed at correcting the shortcomings: the requirements for candidates for bailiffs were clarified, their powers were expanded, the number of bailiffs' social guarantees was increased, the order of their incentives was changed, etc. Apparently, it did not help ...

Difficult economic times are coming. Due to sanctions, due to rising unemployment, due to people losing business and falling incomes, the number of bankruptcies of both legal entities and citizens will inevitably grow.

An additional and not weak load will definitely fall on the system of the Federal Bailiff Service, which is breathing its last. 113 million industries, the lion's share of which is dead weight. By how much will this figure multiply, and what should desperate debt collectors do, losing their last hope of repaying their debts?

And what if "at their service" there will be more encouraging offers from bandits who will promise more effective solutions. And then the debtors will again massively go to the forest at night in the trunk?