Communicated on 17 November 2016
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 38744/11
LYUBLINO LOCAL CHURCH OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS and Aleksandr Vasilyevich FEDICHKIN
against Russia
lodged on 20 June 2011
STATEMENT OF FACTS
The applicants are:
(1) Lyublino Local Church of Evangelical Christians (Люблинская поместная церковь евангельских христиан), a local religious organisation established in 1992 in Moscow (“the applicant church”);
(2) Mr Aleksandr Vasilyevich Fedichkin, a Russian national born in 1951 and living in Moscow, who is the pastor of the applicant church.
The applicants are represented before the Court by Mr R. Maranov, a lawyer with Slavic Centre for Law and Justice in Moscow.
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicants, may be summarised as follows.
The applicant church was registered with the Ministry of Justice as a local religious organisation and listed in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. It organised services of worship, collected donations and carried out charitable work. Having no business activities, paid employees or taxable income, the applicant church did not need to file tax reports in compliance with the Tax Ministry’s letter of 16 May 2003. Every year the applicant church submitted confirmation letters to District Tax Office 27 in Moscow, indicating that it had no business activities or taxable income.
The applicant church owned a part of a building in Moscow and had an account with a Moscow bank used for accumulating donations and paying maintenance charges for the upkeep of the building. The account number was changed in 2001 and the bank duly notified the change both to the applicant church and to District Tax Office 27.
On 2 July 2005 the legislation on legal entities was amended to include an extrajudicial procedure for the winding-up of legal entities that had not submitted any tax reports or used their bank account in the past twelve months.
On 18 January 2008 the Moscow Tax Department determined that the applicant church had been inactive in the preceding twelve months and should be removed from the register of legal entities. The decision was based on the information from District Tax Office 27 certifying that there had been no tax reports or bank transactions in that period. The decision was not notified to the applicant church. On 12 May 2008 the applicant church was struck out of the register. It was not notified of it, either.
Upon discovering that the church had been deleted from the register, the second applicant complained to a court.
On 24 July 2009 the Moscow Commercial Court found in favour of the applicants and voided the tax department’s decision. It established in particular that the District Tax Office 27 had possessed information about an active bank account of the applicant church which it had omitted to forward to the Moscow Tax Department. A representative of the Ministry of Justice confirmed to the court that the applicant church held religious services and could not therefore be considered inactive.
On 30 October 2009 the Commercial Court of the Ninth Circuit rejected the appeal by the Moscow Tax Department which claimed that the court did not have jurisdiction over a dispute involving a non-commercial organisation.
On 12 February 2010 the Federal Commercial Court of the Moscow Circuit held that commercial courts had no jurisdiction over the dispute, quashed the judgments of 24 July and 30 October 2009 and terminated the proceedings. On 9 March 2010 the Supreme Court refused the applicants leave to appeal against that decision.
The applicants brought the matter before a court of general jurisdiction.
On 17 September 2010 the Simonovskiy District Court in Moscow rejected their claim, finding that the burden was on the applicant church to ensure that the tax authorities were aware of their updated bank details.
On 20 December 2010 the Moscow City Court rejected the applicants’ appeal in a summary fashion, without addressing their grounds of appeal.
COMPLAINT
The applicants complain under Articles 9 and 11 of the Convention about the liquidation of the applicant church.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
Was there a violation of Article 9 of the Convention interpreted in the light of Article 11? Did the decision to wind up the applicant church pursue any legitimate aim? Was it notified to the applicants? Was it necessary in a democratic society and proportionate to that legitimate aim? Did the domestic authorities consider the impact of that decision on Evangelical believers and church parishioners? (see Biblical Centre of the Chuvash Republic v. Russia, no. 33203/08, §§ 60-61, 12 June 2014).
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy