SECOND SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 30806/07
Gábor BESSENYEI
against Hungary
The European Court of Human Rights (Second Section), sitting on 18 September 2012 as a Committee composed of:
Dragoljub Popović, President,
András Sajó,
Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque, judges
and Françoise Elens-Passos, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 11 July 2007,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
The applicant, Mr Gábor Bessenyei, is a Hungarian national, who was born in 1952 and lives in Telki. He was represented before the Court by Mr T. Ujvári, a lawyer practising in Budapest.
The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
On 27 March 2000 criminal investigations were instituted against the applicant on charges of fraud.
On 9 October 2000 the Budapest V/VII/XIII District Public Prosecutor’s Office preferred a bill of indictment against the applicant, charging him with fraud.
The composition of the Pest Central District Court changed on several occasions and thus the proceedings had to be started afresh. Following numerous hearings held in the case, the District Court found the applicant guilty of fraud and forgery of private documents on 8 April 2010. It imposed a fine on him in the amount of 120,000 Hungarian forints[1]. In its decision, the District Court explained the mitigation of the sentence as follows:
“The [District] Court took into consideration as mitigating factors: the rather considerable lapse of time, his clean criminal record at the time of the commission of the crime, and a dependant minor.”
On appeal, the Budapest Regional Court held hearings on 6 and 27 May 2011. On the latter date it delivered a judgment. It refrained from imposing a sentence and only issued a reprimand. The Regional Court stated that the applicant
“...was reprimanded instead of having a sentence imposed on him due to the minor importance of the criminal offences and the lapse of time.”
COMPLAINT
The applicant complains under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention about the length of the proceedings.
THE LAW
The applicant complains that the proceedings lasted an unreasonably long time, in breach of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, which reads as relevant:
“In the determination of ... any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a ... hearing within a reasonable time by [a] ... tribunal...”
The Government argue that the applicant cannot claim to be a victim of a violation of his Convention rights, since the domestic courts expressly acknowledged that the proceedings had been unusually long and provided redress by not imposing a sentence for this particular reason. In any event, the authorities displayed the requisite diligence in handling the case.
The applicant contests these views.
The Court observes that the District Court held that the time elapsed since the commission of the crime had been excessive and mitigated the applicant’s sentence on account of this to a fine of EUR 420. Moreover, the Regional Court did not impose a sentence; rather, it only reprimanded him due to the unreasonable length of the proceedings. Against this background, the Court finds that the applicant obtained adequate redress for the alleged violation of his right under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention to the determination within a reasonable time of the criminal charges against him. Accordingly, he can no longer claim to be a victim, for the purposes of Article 34, of a violation of Article 6 § 1. The application is therefore manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 4 of the Convention (see Morby v. Luxembourg (dec.), no. 27156/02, ECHR 2003‑XI and Tamás Kovács v. Hungary, no. 67660/01, § 26, 28 September 2004).
For these reasons, the Court unanimously
Declares the application inadmissible.
Françoise Elens-PassosDragoljub Popović
Deputy RegistrarPresident
[1]. Approx. 420 euros (EUR)
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