Passport control is becoming more controlling for debtors.
Photo: Yury Martyanov
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Debtor Stay Home!
Beginning today, Russian citizens may face problems at passport control as they attempt to leave the country. Under the new edition of the law “On Enforcement Proceeding” that comes into force on February 1, court bailiffs can prevent citizens from going abroad if they owe alimony, back debts on bank credits or even utilities bills and old traffic fines. Among the other new rights bailiffs receive are the ability to enter premises without the owner's permission and to confiscate financial documents. Thus the bailiff's service has practically become a new branch of the special services.
The practice by the Federal Court Bailiffs Service of preventing debtors from leaving the country began in St. Petersburg at the end of 2006, when the service posted on its website a list of 2000 people with a combined debt of 487 million rubles whose passports could be seized if they tried to leave the country. Bailiffs service press secretary Igor Komissarov explained that the bailiffs acted on the basis of laws forbidding citizens with open court cases to leave the country. he said the bailiffs acted before New Year holidays randomly as a “scare tactic.”
Under the new law, bailiffs are authorized to “establish temporary limitations on the departure of debtors from the Russian Federation.” Those limitations can last up to six months and are imposed by court order. According to Komissarov, there were 12,000 such cases last year out of 15 million debt cases the service handled.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 01, 2008
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