FIRST SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 31624/18
Ēriks OSIS
against Latvia
The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting on 26 June 2025 as a Committee composed of:
Erik Wennerström, President,
Raffaele Sabato,
Artūrs Kučs, judges,
and Liv Tigerstedt, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to:
the application (no. 31624/18) against the Republic of Latvia lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 29 June 2018 by a Latvian national, Mr Ēriks Osis (“the applicant”), who was born in 1978, lives in Jēkabpils and was represented by Mr J. Daukuls, a lawyer practising in Riga;
the decision to give notice of the application to the Latvian Government (“the Government”), represented by their former Agent, Ms K. Līce, and subsequently by their current Agent, Ms E.L. Vītola;
the parties’ observations;
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
1. The case concerns the applicant’s complaint under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention that criminal proceedings against him had been excessive in length.
2. On 10 March 2009 criminal proceedings were instituted on the suspicion that officials of a company of which the applicant was a board member had committed tax evasion.
3. On 30 November 2012 the applicant was declared a suspect within those criminal proceedings and on 14 December 2012 he was officially charged with large-scale tax evasion.
4. On 21 August 2014 the pre-trial investigation was closed and the case was referred to a first-instance court. By a judgment of 14 June 2016, the first-instance court convicted the applicant of large-scale tax evasion and sentenced him to two years’ imprisonment. He was also prohibited from engaging in business activities for three years and ordered to pay 334,536.70 euros in damages to the State.
5. By a decision of 6 April 2017, the Riga Regional Court upheld the judgment and found that there had been no unjustified delay in the pre-trial criminal proceedings, having regard to the substantial material in the case file (comprising eleven volumes), the legal complexity of the case and the number of procedural steps involved. It further concluded that the case had not been unduly delayed at first instance or on appeal and that it had been dealt with within a reasonable time.
6. On 22 June 2017 a judge of the Supreme Court refused to examine an appeal on points of law lodged by the applicant’s lawyer.
7. On 10 January 2018 the applicant’s lawyer lodged an application for a de novo examination of the case in accordance with Chapter 63 of the Criminal Procedure Law (see paragraph 10 below). He argued that the Supreme Court’s refusal to examine the appeal on points of law had led to an exacerbation of the applicant’s situation.
8. By a decision of 28 February 2018, the Supreme Court dismissed the application and upheld the Regional Court’s decision of 6 April 2017. The Supreme Court found that the lawyer’s allegation of an unjustified delay in the case had been made without any legal analysis or concrete justification. Moreover, the Supreme Court noted that the Regional Court had made a detailed assessment of the conduct and duration of the criminal proceedings and had found that there had been no unjustified delay in the case (see paragraph 5 above). The Supreme Court found no error in the assessment of the facts by the Regional Court.
9. The applicant alleged that the length of the criminal proceedings had breached the “reasonable time” requirement laid down in Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.
RELEVANT LEGAL FRAMEWORK
10. Chapter 63 of the Criminal Procedure Law regulates the procedure for reviewing judgments and decisions which have entered into force. Section 662(1) of that Law, as in force at the material time, provided that a decision or judgment which had entered into force could be examined de novo if it had not been examined in proceedings on points of law. Section 665 provided that an application for a fresh examination of a judgment or decision could be made if: (1) a judgment or decision had been adopted by an unlawfully composed court; (2) one of the judges had been absent during the court deliberations; or (3) breaches of the Criminal Law and significant breaches of the Criminal Procedure Law had exacerbated the situation of the convicted person (see Dāvidsons and Savins v. Latvia, nos. 17574/07 and 25235/07, §§ 24-26, 7 January 2016).
11. In accordance with section 667 of the Criminal Procedure Law, there was no time-limit for lodging such an application.
THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT
12. The applicant claimed that the criminal proceedings against him had been of excessive length. In particular, he argued that the pre-trial investigation had been too lengthy and that no investigative activities had been carried out in 2011, 2013 or 2014 (until the decision of 21 August 2014 to close the pre‑trial investigation – see paragraph 4 above).
13. The Government submitted that the applicant had lodged his complaint with the Court after the expiry of the six-month time-limit[1] and that the application should therefore be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 1 of the Convention.
14. The six-month rule set out in Article 35 § 1 is intended to promote security of the law/legal certainty and to ensure that cases raising issues under the Convention are dealt with within a reasonable time. It protects the authorities and other persons concerned from uncertainty for a prolonged period of time (see Jeronovičs v. Latvia [GC], no. 44898/10, § 74, 5 July 2016).
15. In assessing whether an applicant has complied with Article 35 § 1, it is important to bear in mind that the requirements contained in that Article concerning the exhaustion of domestic remedies and the six-month period are closely interrelated (ibid., § 75).
16. According to the Court’s established case-law, an application for a supervisory review or similar extraordinary remedies cannot, as a general rule, be taken into account for the purposes of Article 35 § 1 of the Convention (see Dāvidsons and Savins, cited above, § 35). The Court has already held that the review procedure enshrined in Chapter 63 of the Criminal Procedure Law constitutes such an extraordinary remedy (ibid., § 37; see also Cuško v. Latvia, no. 32163/09, § 36, 7 December 2017, and Peršteina v. Latvia (dec.), no. 35198/13, § 15, 2 April 2019). An exception could be granted in certain instances where the proceedings, although characterised as “extraordinary” or “exceptional” in domestic law, were deemed by the Court to be similar in nature and scope to ordinary appeal proceedings (see Dāvidsons and Savins, cited above, § 35). In the present case, there are no exceptional circumstances that could justify taking into account recourse to this extraordinary remedy for the determination of the six‑month time‑limit (contrast, mutatis mutandis, Schmidt v. Latvia, no. 22493/05, §§ 67-71, 27 April 2017).
17. The Court notes that the final decision with respect to the applicant’s criminal conviction was taken on 22 June 2017 and that the judgment convicting the applicant took effect on the same day.
18. It follows that, as the application was submitted to the Court on 29 June 2018, the complaint regarding the length of the criminal proceedings under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention is out of time and must therefore be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 1 and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 17 July 2025.
Liv Tigerstedt Erik Wennerström
Deputy Registrar President
[1] Protocol No. 15 to the Convention has shortened to four months from the final domestic decision the time-limit provided for by Article 35 § 1 of the Convention. However, in the present case the six-month period still applies, noting that the application was lodged with the Court prior to 1 February 2022, date of entry into force of the new rule (pursuant to Article 8 § 3 of Protocol No. 15 to the Convention).