A Moscow court has ordered the government to pay a mere 30,000 rubles for the wrongful disqualification of a candidate from elections. Despite claiming 2.2 million rubles in damages, the ...
The Gagarin Court of Moscow ordered the Russian Federation on November 26 to pay Elena Silaeva 30,000 rubles as compensation for her unlawful removal from the elections. In 2022, the applicant ran for the councils of deputies in two municipal districts—Vostochnoye Izmaylovo and Gagarin. In the first district, her candidacy was not registered, and in the second, the registration was canceled by a court ruling, citing inaccuracies in the information regarding the candidate's occupation. The woman stated that she was self-employed, whereas the tax authority's certificate classified her as a "physical person—taxpayer of the professional income tax."
Ms. Silaeva contested the decisions of the electoral commissions and courts, but she was only able to prove her case in the Constitutional Court (CC): in May 2024, it indicated that depriving a candidate of the right to identify as self-employed in documents limits their electoral opportunities.
The CC mandated the federal legislator to make the necessary amendments and recognized the applicant's right to compensation, as there was no other way to restore her rights: the elections had already taken place. The Izmaylovsky and Gagarin courts, which handled the cases involving the applicant in the first instance, were to determine the amount.
Elena Silaeva assessed her damages at 2.2 million rubles. This amount was derived from several components: in particular, she estimated the moral damage caused by her removal from the elections at 200,000 rubles and the violation of her right to be elected at 1.9 million rubles (she based this on the income of the head of the municipal district since the formation of the new council of deputies). Additionally, the applicant believed she deserved a reward for her legal activity amounting to 107,000 rubles.
A representative from the Ministry of Finance requested the court to deny the claimed compensation, explaining that registration as a candidate does not guarantee election as a deputy, let alone as the head of a municipal entity; therefore, the plaintiff cannot expect the specified amount.
Furthermore, according to the Ministry of Finance, Ms. Silaeva did not provide evidence of the moral and ethical suffering she experienced, and the reward for her active legal position "does not meet the standards of reasonableness." A representative from the Moscow City Election Commission also stated that the compensation amount was "clearly inflated and unreasonable," and the figures were "pulled from thin air." He considered the sum of 30,000 rubles to be reasonable, which the court ultimately awarded to the applicant (only the dispositive part of the decision has been announced so far).
Elena Silaeva disagreed with this decision and promised to appeal it to "Ъ." "The compensatory mechanism is an equivalent means of restoring rights in cases where a review of the case is impossible," explained her lawyer Ivan Brikulsky, who represented Ms. Silaeva in court. "The goal of such compensation is to restore the lost constitutional right in monetary terms, and the main requirement is equivalence. This mechanism cannot offer fewer guarantees than a case review. The monetary amount is effectively an assessment of the value of the constitutional right." Mr. Brikulsky insists that the sum of 30,000 rubles does not meet the equivalence criterion: "To quote former CC judge Tamara Georgievna Morshchakova, one cannot skimp on constitutional rights; we don't have many of them."
The idea of compensation for violated electoral rights was introduced by the CC many years ago, notes electoral lawyer Garegin Mitin. Although instances of its award are extremely rare (for example, in September, as reported by "Ъ," the CPRF won 100,000 rubles for the unlawful removal of its list from the 2022 elections in the Orenburg region), a relevant law enforcement practice has developed, and courts typically award small compensations. This is partly due to judges considering budgetary constraints and partly due to the lack of a calculation methodology, explains the expert; no one knows how to assess the damage from violations of political rights.
Anastasia Korya