Communicated on 16 September 2016
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 475/08
Yelena Viktorovna EILDERS and others
against Russia
lodged on 21 November 2007
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicants are Russian nationals:
(1) Ms Yelena Viktorovna Eilders (née Zabelina, formerly Davydova), born in 1971 and living in Leverkusen, Germany;
(2) Ms Galina Pavlovna Zabelina, born in 1943 and died in 2013;
(3) Mr Viktor Aleksandrovich Zabelin, born in 1942 and living in Tambov, Russia.
They are represented before the Court by Mr M. Krylovskiy, a lawyer practising in Tambov.
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows.
On 25 April 2007 Mr P.Z., the brother of the first applicant and the son of the second and third applicants, was charged with large-scale fraud; his name was placed on the list of fugitives from justice. He was accused of embezzling the assets of the companies, of which he had been the director general. The wronged companies filed a claim for compensation in respect of pecuniary damage.
On 12 May 2007 a senior operational officer from the Federal Security Service sent a letter to the investigator in charge of P.Z.’s case to inform him that “according to the available information, the real estate property owned by [the first applicant] (four flats) and by [the second applicant] (one flat) had been purchased at the expense of their close relative P.Z.”
On 22 May 2007 the investigator asked the Basmannyy District Court in Moscow to authorise seizure of the applicants’ property, including: the Shirokaya St and Proletarskaya St flats owned by the first applicant, the Sovetskaya St flat owned by the second applicant, and the Nissan car owned by the third applicant. He referred to undisclosed sources allegedly confirming that all that property had been purchased by P.Z.
By separate decisions of 24 May 2007, the District Court granted the request, noting that it had been submitted in the framework of a criminal investigation and ratified by a supervising prosecutor.
The applicants appealed against the seizure orders. They produced evidence showing that they had paid for the impugned property out of their pocket and that the link to P.Z. was the investigator’s conjecture without basis in fact. They were not defendants in any criminal proceedings or respondents in any civil claim and there were no legal grounds for charging their property.
On 13 August 2007 the Moscow City Court rejected their appeals, stating that the District Court had “carefully reviewed the materials enclosed with the investigator’s request and reached the justified conclusion that there were sufficient grounds for seizing” the listed property.
COMPLAINT
The applicants complain under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 about an unjustified seizure of their property.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Are there any heirs or close family members who have expressed the wish to pursue the proceedings before the Court in so far as the application was lodged by the late second applicant?
2. The parties are requested to supply the list of all seized property, to indicate the actual duration of the seizure and any subsequent relevant developments in the proceedings.
3. Was there a violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 on account of the seizure of the applicants’ property? Did the domestic courts subject the investigator’s assertion that the property had been purchased at P.Z.’s expense to a meaningful scrutiny?
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy