Personal experience: recovering a penny fine in Russia is more expensive than the fine itself

An example of this is the story of a Moscow lawyer.

Yury Shcheglov, head of the Shcheglov & Partners Law Office, said that Russian officials, fined citizens or institutions, fined the state itself: “Each of my lawyers knows that it’s very difficult to surprise Yury Anatolyevich Shcheglov. It’s all the more fun to tell you a story that struck me to the core.

On May 15, 2020, the Bureau received a letter from the judicial section of the magistrate in Moscow No. 353 of the Airport District, which contained a resolution in the case of an administrative offense “Violation of the deadlines established by law for the submission of information (documents) to the bodies of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation”.

It followed from the resolution that, as the unchanged, for 27 years, head of the Law Office of the city of Moscow “Shcheglov and Partners”, I was brought to administrative responsibility for the late transfer of information to the FIU.

My first reaction was admiration. No, what are they, huh! Over the indicated 27 years, the Bureau has conducted more than a dozen cases involving the FIU, of which 3 or 4 concerned personally our lawyers and the interests of the Bureau. All cases were won by us. Because I could not help but rejoice that the fund employees had found how to hook their indefatigable opponents.

But having read the judicial act itself, I was dumbfounded. No, the fact of the violation was obvious even to the child. Our accountant, for personal and deeply valid reasons, submitted the reports to the FIU with a delay. And formally, as a legal entity, which is worthless to hurt, we had to bear responsibility, no doubt.

True, the delay itself was not long - 24 hours, and the size of the fine - 300 rubles - hardly covered the state’s expenses for servicing this dispute.

Judge for yourself how much paper and man-hours the employees of the Pension Fund spent collecting materials for submission to the court.

Dear person, Justice of the peace Andrei Potapov spent his time and time as a secretary for a court hearing, preparing and submitting a judicial act.

All these are such inconspicuous and insignificant, it would seem, expenses that pulled out of the budget much more than 300 rubles paid by me immediately.

It was at that moment (and the resolution was adopted on April 20, 2020, during the quarantine / pandemic / forced self-isolation period, call it whatever you like), when reasonableness and adequacy became the main evaluations of the activities of government agencies, the court and the FIU commit heroic actions, risk the health of their employees during name 300 rub.

Nowadays it was called hammering nails with a microscope. And a reasonable, zealous owner punished for such squandering.

I, as a person who grew up in the Soviet Union, understand the race of individual employees for the indicators of violations found, forced penalties and unverified judicial acts.

But as a taxpayer, I don’t understand why budget funds are being spent on this aimless stick system.

And although I, as a lawyer, see ways to cancel this decision, as a rational host, I will not spend neither my resources nor the state’s resources on this five-penny lawsuit...”