21 August 2020

Committee on Road Management of the Leningrad Region appealed to the Arbitrary Court of Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Region following the inspections held at Kingissep District.

In May 2020, the Governor of the Leningrad Region Alexander Drozdenko (who used to be the head of the district in 1996-2002) granted the Committee with the powers to check how the businesses follow the measures to counter the spread of COVID-19. Drozdenko gave the Committee the rights to draw up violation statements in accordance with article 20.6.1 of the Code of Administrative Offences (failure to comply with rules of conduct in emergence or under threat of emergency). Paragraph 1 of the article provides for significant fines for legal entities in amounts of 100,000 to 300,000 rubles. According to the results of the inspection, most violations are the same, mainly the store personnel not wearing gloves.

Irina Serova, the head of St Petersburg regional office of Khrenov&Partners, believes that the Committee was wrong to appeal to the Arbitrary Court on the grounds of this article of the Code of Administrative Offences. ‘In its review dated April 23, 2020 the Supreme Court stated that these cases must be heard by district courts by location of occurrence or location of authority that ran the administrative investigation’.

The full text of the article may be viewed here (in Russian).