Miailhe v. France (no. 2)

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No.

September 1996

Miailhe v. France (no. 2) - 18978/91

Judgment 26.9.1996

Article 6

Administrative proceedings

Criminal proceedings

Article 6-1

Fair hearing

Adversarial trial

Taxpayer's access to documents held by the Revenue in order to defend himself during the administrative and judicial stages of proceedings brought against him: no violation

[This summary is extracted from the Court’s official reports (Series A or Reports of Judgments and Decisions). Its formatting and structure may therefore differ from the Case-Law Information Note summaries.]

I.THE GOVERNMENT'S PRELIMINARY OBJECTIONS

Incompatibility ratione materiae with Convention and failure to exhaust domestic remedies in respect of the part of the application concerning the supplementary tax assessment proceedings: administrative supplementary tax assessment proceedings currently pending before the Conseil d'Etat, the court with jurisdiction to hear appeals on points of law.

Conclusion: objections devoid of purpose (unanimously).

Failure to exhaust domestic remedies in respect of procedure of consulting Tax Offences Board (CIF): objection already considered and rejected by Commission - no reason to depart from its analysis.

Conclusion: objection dismissed (unanimously).

Applicant not a victim in respect of complaint that the documents seized by the customs had not been produced.

Conclusion: objection joined to merits and dismissed (unanimously).

II.ARTICLE 6 § 1 OF THE CONVENTION

Of the private letters and personal documents referred to in the Miailhe (no. 1) judgment of 25 February 1993, those which had been used for the judicial investigation in the criminal proceedings had been annexed to the complaint lodged by the Revenue, which added documents from the Philippines - all those documents had been in criminal case file, to which applicant had had access - the latter had himself filed some of the documents from the Philippines.

The ordinary courts had dismissed the objections of nullity raised by the applicant and had based their rulings solely on the documents in the case file, on which the parties had presented argument at hearings before them, thereby ensuring that applicant had had a fair trial - failure to produce certain documents during procedure of consulting CIF or in the criminal proceedings had therefore not infringed the rights of the defence or the principle of equality of arms.

Whenever consulted on advisability of lodging a complaint for the offences referred to in Article 1741 of the General Tax Code, CIF gave an opinion which was binding on the Minister - the criminal courts had unfettered discretion to assess facts of an alleged fraud and could acquit.

Fact that there were no adversarial proceedings before CIF gave its opinion might in some cases give rise to fear that taxpayer would find himself in a more difficult position - nevertheless, only the preliminary intervention of an advisory body was concerned - in the instant case there had been a judicial investigation and no direct summons, and the criminal proceedings that had been set in motion following the Revenue's complaint had been conducted at two levels of jurisdiction - taken as a whole the proceedings in issue had been fair.

Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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