FOURTH SECTION
PARTIAL DECISION
AS TO THE ADMISSIBILITY OF
Application no. 15710/03
by Päivi URMAS
against Finland
The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 21 November 2006 as a Chamber composed of:
SirNicolas Bratza, President,
MrJ. Casadevall,
MrM. Pellonpää,
MrS. Pavlovschi,
MrL. Garlicki,
MsL. Mijović,
MrJ. Šikuta, judges,
and Mr T.L. Early, Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 23 April 2003,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
The applicant, Ms Päivi Urmas, is a Finnish national who was born in 1960 and lives in Ollila.
A. The circumstances of the case
The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
The applicant was employed by a bank as a head of financing at the relevant time. The policy followed in the bank caused credit losses, which led to the bank’s winding-up at the beginning of the 1990s.
On 4 May 1993 the applicant was interrogated by the police for the first time. She was suspected of, inter alia, aggravated fraud and offences of misuse of a position of trust in connection with her activities at the bank. She was questioned over some 60 days. She was charged on 27 January 1995. The charges against her included over 70 counts.
The hearing of the case, which involved some 30 defendants, including the applicant, began in the Salo District Court (käräjäoikeus, tingsrätten) on 7 March 1995. The proceedings included several adjournments and lasted approximately five years in total. The case was heard over a total of 68 or 69 days.
On 24 March 2000 the District Court rendered its judgment, which ran to almost 900 pages. The applicant was convicted of six counts of offences of misuse of a position of trust and sentenced to a suspended term of three months’ imprisonment and a supplementary fine. The court decided to examine the complainant’s (the bank’s successor) claims for damages in separate civil proceedings. Those proceedings are still pending before the national courts.
Having held an oral hearing, the Turku Court of Appeal (hovioikeus, hovrätten) gave judgment on 4 March 2002. It acquitted the applicant of all charges.
On 30 October 2002 the Supreme Court (korkein oikeus, högsta domstolen) refused the complainant and other defendants leave to appeal.
The proceedings were widely reported in the Finnish media.
COMPLAINTS
The applicant complains that the total length of the criminal proceedings was incompatible with the reasonable time requirement. She also complains that the proceedings were affected by bias because the public prosecutor and the District Court judge had a negative predisposition against her and that the judge worked too closely with the prosecutor and the complainant. Moreover, she complains that the contents of the charges were too vague and that the publicity surrounding the trial rendered the trial unfair, violated the presumption of innocence and damaged her private life. She relies on Article 6 §§ 1-2 and 3(a) and Article 13 of the Convention.
THE LAW
A. Length of the criminal proceedings
The applicant complains about the length of the criminal proceedings against her. Article 6 § 1, in so far as relevant, reads as follows:
“In the determination of ... any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal...”
Article 13 reads as follows:
“Everyone whose rights and freedoms as set forth in [the] Convention are violated shall have an effective remedy before a national authority notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity.”
The Court considers that it cannot, on the basis of the case file, determine the admissibility of this complaint and that it is therefore necessary, in accordance with Rule 54 § 2 (b) of the Rules of Court, to give notice of this part of the application to the respondent Government.
B. The remainder of the application
The applicant further complains under the above-cited Article 6 §§ 1, 2 and 3 (a) that the proceedings were flawed in some respects. Article 6 § 2 and 3 (a) reads as follows:
“2. Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law.
3. Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights:
(a) to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him;”
Under Article 34 of the Convention the Court may receive applications from any person, non-governmental organisation or group of individuals claiming to be “the victim of a violation” by one of the High Contracting Parties of the rights set forth in the Convention or the Protocols thereto. Pursuant to the Court’s case-law an acquitted defendant cannot however claim to be a victim of violations of the procedural guarantees of Article 6 which, according to him, took place in the course of the criminal proceedings against him. In such cases the alleged violation of Article 6 is rectified by the acquittal (see, among other authorities, V.Q. v. Italy (dec.), no. 44994/98, 14 March 2002).
The Court notes that the present applicant was acquitted of all charges by the Court of Appeal. In these circumstances she cannot claim to be a victim of a violation of her right to a fair trial.
It follows that this complaint is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court unanimously
Decides to adjourn the examination of the applicant’s complaint concerning the length of the criminal proceedings and the lack of an effective remedy in that connection;
Declares the remainder of the application inadmissible.
T.L. earlyNicolas bratza
RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy