Society of Russian-Chechen Friendship adjudges 120,000 roubles from tax inspectorate

The Arbitration Court of the Nizhniy Novgorod Region has found unjustified the tax claims to the Society of Russian-Chechen Friendship (ORChD) in the sum of 120,000 roubles. The Court made this decision on Monday, June 18, after considering the claim of the ORChD.

"Actually, this is our loss, since the taxation claims towards us total to more than one million roubles, that is, the main challenged sum of the tax claim presented to the Society has been recognized lawful. Since the Court announced the resolutory part of the decision only, the judge's motives are not yet clear. They'll probably become such next week only, when we receive the full text of the Court decision by mail," Stanislav Dmitrievskiy, former director of judicially liquidated this January Society of the Russian-Chechen Friendship, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"I absolutely fail to understand the legal logic of the judge. The tax service had stated that once the organization was recognized extremist, the charitable donations that it had received for peacemaking activities, were spent non-purposefully - to excite interethnic enmity. In the opinion of tax agents, these funds are levied with profit tax. Probably, the Court was guided by the same logic," Mr Dmitrievskiy explained.

In its claim, the ORChD demanded to cancel Decision No. 25 of the Inspectorate of the Federal Tax Service (IFTS) for the Nizhniy Novgorod District of the city of Nizhniy Novgorod of August 15, 2005, on bringing the Society to responsibility for committing tax offence. According to this document, the ORChD should pay, from its 2002-2004 special-purpose receipts, the profit tax and penalties in the sum of 1,001,561 roubles.

This money should be paid to the state by the liquidating commission of the ORCHD, headed by that very Stanislav Dmitrievskiy. According to his story, both the tax and the accrued penalty will not be paid, since the prohibited organization has left neither funds nor property.

The "Caucasian Knot" has informed earlier that on January 23, 2007, the Supreme Court of Russia upheld the decision of the Nizhniy Novgorod Regional Court on liquidation of the inter-regional public organization "Society of Russian-Chechen Friendship" of October 13 last year.

Among the grounds, on which the ORChD was liquidated, was the outstanding previous conviction of its executive director Stanislav Dmitrievskiy on the "extremist" Article, in combination with the fact that the Society had not publicly separated itself from his activities and left him as its leader after the sentence. The new edition of the law "On Public Associations," which was in the beginning of 2006 an object of sharp criticism by international community and Russian nongovernmental organizations, is called to be the legal source of the closure.

On February 3, 2005, Dmitrievskiy was sentenced to two years of conditional imprisonment for publication in the newspaper "Human Rights Defence" of statements of Aslan Maskhadov and Ahmed Zakaev, leaders of non-recognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. The major Russian and international human rights organizations unanimously blamed this verdict as unfair and politically motivated. In June 2006, the Russian-Chechen News Agency headed by Dmitrievskiy was awarded in Hamburg with Herd Bucerius Prize "Free Press of the Eastern Europe-2006," and in July 2006, Dmitrievskiy and his closest colleague Oksana Chelysheva were awarded in London with a special award of the Amnesty International for human rights journalism executed under danger.

After his conviction, Stanislav Dmitrievskiy filed a complaint to the European Court asking to recognize violation of his rights as stipulated by Article 10 ("freedom of expression of one's opinion"), Article 6 ("fair trial") and Article 12 ("effective investigation") of the European Convention on Human Rights.