Rosstandart has began to cancel documents for cars imported by parallel import

Alexander Dybin

In Russia, the first cases of revocation of the safety certificate of vehicle structures have appeared.

It is issued when a car is imported into the country, and on the basis of this certificate, a technical means passport is issued – the main document that secures ownership of the car. Without it, you can't register a car, you can't get license plates, sell or buy, and generally move around on the roads.

Rosstandart started talking about the fact that this could happen back in the fall, when they drew attention to laboratories that check imported cars through the Far East. At that time, officials noted that they record the facts of issuing safety certificate of vehicle structures without real verification of documents, and most importantly, the discrepancy between the data in the documents and the actual parameters of the car. For example, they underestimate the power to save on taxes and insurance. Then, as an example, one of the laboratories was named, which requested 15,000 forms from the state in one week. It is simply impossible to physically check such a number of cars by the forces of one organization. It should be noted that in 2022, against the background of the mass withdrawal of Western automakers from Russia, the flow of used cars from Japan and Korea has sharply increased. According to the estimates of the Japanese Association of Used Car Exporters, deliveries of used cars to Russia in 2022 increased by 32% and amounted to 213.5 thousand cars.

According to the Vice - President of the National Automobile Union Anton Shaparin, the flow of cars from the Far East is not as problematic as cars entering the Russian Federation through Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. The main problem of these cars is that they do not comply with Euro-4 and Euro-5 environmental standards, which means that even in theory they cannot be legalized in Russia.

"We have been talking about this since the summer", - Shaparin said, - "Kazakh or Kyrgyz laboratories issue safety certificates of vehicle structures with an overestimation of the ecological class. In Kazakhstan, Euro-0 cars easily and inexpensively turn into Euro-4 and Euro-5. This is the main problem. Understating the power is a rarer situation. Since if they do it, it's in Russian laboratories, and they are more often afraid to take risks. On such falsification, they will earn 50,000 profit on one car, but if it is revealed that they received 300,000 fines. But the machinations with the ecological class in Kazakhstan are put on stream".

Another, so far hidden part of the iceberg is the manipulation of the customs value of the car. The expert believes that in the near future, the customs service will be involved in the history of rechecking imported cars and buyers will also get problems from this department.

"Now the head of the customs service has been replaced against the background of a colossal shortage of fees", - Shaprain says, - "I think we will see interest in the topic of cars and customs clearance on the territory of Kazakhstan from this service as well. I know that Rosstandart works in conjunction with customs. At the same time, for example, there are car dealerships in Moscow that sell cars with an inflated ecological class, bloggers promote cars of Kazakh customs clearance. I think that soon those who bought these cars will get a lot of problems". Anton Shaparin believes that tens of thousands of cars imported to Russia through Kazakhstan are at risk.

To a lesser extent, the cars that came from the Far East will have problems. There is another problematic channel – Belarus.

"There is no need to fake an environmental class, because the cars are from Europe. But they are usually broken or drowned, they are bought from auctions of insurance companies, restored and sold. Another problematic category is leasing cars, actually stolen in Europe. There is data on the theft in the Interpol database, the exchange of information and interaction is still going on and this may pop up during registration and the car simply will not be registered. The risk is very high."How can a buyer secure their money?

The car market in Russia is rapidly rushing into the dashing 90s, when no one was responsible for anything. Until recently, the most reliable seller was official dealers who worked in the legal field, and also complied with the strict requirements of Western companies. Now even these legal entities import cars into Russia using parallel schemes and optimize costs by registering them for individuals. Therefore, a car with a bad past can get caught even by a decent company.

What should a person do who has a PTSD revoked due to problems with safety certificates of vehicle structures? Most likely, to accept losses. You can try to cancel the transaction through the court and demand money from the seller. But if it is an individual or a one-day company, there is very little chance. It is also almost impossible to legalize such a car. In the case of the environmental standard, the rules are strict, there are no loopholes for reviewing the decision. In the case of frauds with the power of the car, it may be possible to pass the examination again and get a new certificate, but these are circles of bureaucratic hell.

"The most logical thing is to go to the seller, ask "why did you do this to me", and the seller's trace is simple, he is most often in Kazakhstan and there is simply no one to sue," says Anton Shaparin, "The most annoying thing is that when buying such cars, people do not save anything, they are sold for full value, as well as imported legally. All profits are made by those who came up with this scheme".

Is there any way to protect yourself and check the car before buying? Checking the VIN code, most likely, will not give anything, not all models have an environmental class. The only more or less reliable way is to buy a car only from a supplier who can show a customs declaration issued by the Russian customs, as well as a Russian safety certificate obtained from a laboratory inside the country.

"I think that Rosstandart will present some kind of system solution to this problem", - the expert says, "But there is no one yet".