Case of the month. Amnesty’s ups and downs

The case against Valery Izrailit is a significant one in many ways. We see how the law enforcement system works, how a district court judge works, how the supreme court instance works. We also see the reaction of the authorities to public accusations of promises not being kept.

On October 30, 2019 (after some vacillation), all the participants of the amnesty were given some hope. The Presidium of the Russian Supreme Court, on instructions of the chair of the Supreme Court Vyacheslav Lebedev, examined the issue of the types of guarantees that are to be given to amnesty participants in the course of criminal proceedings.

The supreme court instance in its response noted that:

1. Information in the declaration and attached documents is a tax secret to be ensured by the tax authority.
2. Other state or non-state authorities and organizations (including law enforcement) are not entitled to access such information and documents, including based on court decisions.
3. Only the declarant may request such information. He and only he is entitled to submit this information as evidence for a criminal case.
4. In case of any discrepancies between the criminal laws and the amnesty law, the latter prevails.
5. And the main thing: an “absolute ban” is established on using the special declaration as grounds for initiating a criminal case or as evidence in such a case, irrespective of the grounds on which a person is being prosecuted.

In essence, that is what we understood the amnesty to be under the law, and what we counted on when filing the special declarations. The actions of the FSB and first-instance court showed what amnesty is in real life.

As reported earlier, there has been a change in the position of the Supreme Court itself – first, the it didn’t find any fault with the FSB’s actions, then Deputy Chair Vladimir Davydov cancelled this decree based on procedural grounds, noting that the issue needs to be reexamined in the first-instance court. And now, the Presidium tried after all to tip the scales in favor of declarants. And the law.

Irrespective of whether the first-instance court will repeat the argument of the Supreme Court, this does not change the essence of the case. We have already seen how the authorities on location “work” with the guarantees given to us, and how they read the letter of the law. We thank the Supreme Court for the explanation (which could not have in principal been any different), but we remain vigilant and ready for anything.