Forcing the State Treasury to recover damages from Judge Blinov

We’ve launched one of the most intriguing legal cases in the “let’s poke it with a sharp stick” category.

As you may recall, the ECHR (European Court of Human Rights) awarded me 3,419,000 rubles from Russia in compensation because the proceedings in the “Kirovles case” under Judge Blinov were not a real trial, but a fabrication.

The Presidium of the Supreme Court agreed with the ECHR’s ruling.

I was paid the money, which is good. But what’s bad is that the money was paid to me by the Ministry of Justice out of Russia’s state budget. In other words, roughly speaking, 2 kopecks were squeezed out of every Russian citizen to pay for Judge Blinov’s unjust ruling.

2 kopecks is not much, but you have to admit, it still feels unfair. If you pay 2 kopecks for every ruling by every bad judge, you’ll be left with nothing.

And that is precisely why the law provides that the Russian Federation has the right to recover the money from the person because of whom the European Court fined it:

So, on absolutely ironclad legal grounds, we demanded that the money paid to me—those 3.4 million rubles—be recovered from Judge Blinov.

Details and the full text of the motion.

It will be tremendously, tremendously interesting to see how the Ministry of Justice and the Treasury behave. To see how this slippery creature wriggles in our frying pan. And there will also be a remarkable legal decision showing how willing the state really is to recover money from dishonest officials through whose fault it lost that money.

In the beautiful Russia of the future, people like Blinov will simply be put behind bars, not merely hit with recourse claims. To bring that future closer, sign in support of my nomination.