Communicated on 9 July 2020
Published on 27 July 2020
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 30567/18
Yevgeniy Vadimovich CHEKANNIKOV
against Russia
lodged on 22 June 2018
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicant, Mr Yevgeniy Vadimovich Chekannikov, is a Russian national, who was born in 1961 and lives in Vladivostok. He is represented before the Court by Mr Y. Boychenko, a lawyer practicing in Strasbourg.
The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
In 2007 the prosecutor’s office opened a criminal investigation into multiple transactions with state real property in respect of 14 persons. It was suspected that a group of alleged perpetrators which included public servants and entrepreneurs conducted fraudulent privatisation of state property. They organised the sale of state real property by tender at prices below the market value to the members of the group with its subsequent resale at a market price. In 2009 the applicant, a director of a commercial company at the time, was indicted on several counts of fraud and participation in criminal activities of an organised group.
On 5 December 2016 the Primorskiy Regional Court found the applicant guilty of three counts of fraud and participation in criminal activities of an organised group and gave him a three years’ conditional sentence and a fine. The court relied on the statements of witnesses, documents and forensic evidence, in particular a forensic report determining the value of the state property misappropriated by the defendants. The defendants sought to challenge the findings of the court-appointed expert and asked the court to question specialists Z. and D. whose testimonies would support such challenge. The trial court dismissed the request. The trial court agreed to question specialist L. on the same issue. The judgment, however, remained silent as to the admissibility or probative value of L.’s statement.
The applicant appealed, alleging inter alia, that the trial court refused to question specialists Z. and D. on the defendants’ behalf or to assess L.’s statement.
On 28 December 2017 the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation upheld the applicant’s conviction, in substance, on appeal, applied the statute of limitations and released him from serving the sentence. It appears that the Supreme Court did not address the applicant’s argument concerning the questioning of Z., D. or L.
COMPLAINTS
The applicant complains under Article 6 of the Convention that the criminal proceedings in his case were unfair. In particular, the trial court refused to question specialist Z. and D. on behalf of defence and, as a result, the applicant was unable to challenge the forensic expert evidence introduced by the prosecution.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
Did the applicant have a fair hearing in the determination of the criminal charges against him, in accordance with Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (d) of the Convention? In particular, as regards the trial court’s refusal to question the specialists D. and Z on behalf of the defence when finding the applicant guilty, was there an imbalance between the defence and the prosecution in the area of collecting and adducing expert evidence (see Khodorkovskiy and Lebedev v. Russia, nos. 11082/06 and 13772/05, §§ 724-35, 25 July 2013, and Pichugin v. Russia [Committee], no. 38958/07, §§ 31-38, 6 June 2017)?
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