Published on 15 December 2025
FIFTH SECTION
Application no. 51302/20
Mariya Olegivna MALIMON
against Ukraine
lodged on 6 November 2020
communicated on 26 November 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns an interference with the applicant’s property rights to a vehicle, of which she was a bone fide purchaser. The registration of the applicant’s vehicle was cancelled on the ground that the previous owner had not paid custom duties having used the falsified documents during registration.
Courts of two instances found for the applicant and ordered the local police service centre to renew the registration of the applicant’s vehicle. Those decision were quashed by the Administrative Cassation Court within the Supreme Court of Ukraine which ruled that the vehicle registration was to be cancelled if the vehicle had not been customs cleared regardless of who was under obligation to pay the respective custom duties – the current owner or the previous one.
The applicant invokes Article 1 of Protocol No. 1.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Has the applicant exhausted all effective domestic remedies, as required by Article 35 § 1 of the Convention, as regards her complaint under Article 1 or Protocol No. 1? In particular, did she have a possibility to claim or otherwise obtain a compensation for losses suffered?
2. Has the annulment of the registration of the car, of which the applicant had been a bona fide acquirer, and which had already been registered for years in Ukraine, been lawful? Notably, have the relevant provisions of domestic law been complied with (see East West Alliance Limited v. Ukraine, no. 19336/04, § 167, 23 January 2014, with further references)?
3. Has the requisite fair balance between the demands of the general interest and the requirements of the protection of the applicant’s property rights been respected (see, for example, Akshin Garayev v. Azerbaijan, no. 30352/11, § 56, 2 February 2023, and the case-law references therein)?