In defense of the rights of car owners

Members of the Parliamentary Committee on Legislation, Defense, Security, Peacekeeping, Law Enforcement, Protection of the Rights and Freedoms of Citizens Galina Antyufeeva, Vitaly Kalin, Grigory Dyachenko, Oleg Petrik, Oleg Belyakov, Valery Babchinetsky initiated the law-in-draft “On Introduction amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses".

The main purpose of the document is to harmonize the legislation of the republic with the legislation of the Russian Federation in the sphere of ensuring the production of cases of administrative offenses. The authors proposed to exclude from the Administrative Code of this type of security, as the prohibition of the operation of the vehicle with the removal of state license plates of vehicles.

Previously, in violation of the rules of operation of the vehicle and control it imposed a ban on its use for its intended purpose. In this case, state license plates were subject to removal until the reason for prohibiting the operation of the vehicle was removed. The movement of a car or motorcycle without license plates was allowed only to the place of elimination of the reason for which their operation was prohibited (but not more than one day from the time of removal of state license plates). After the elimination of the reason for prohibiting the use of a vehicle, the state license plates were again returned to its owner or to a person who has the documents necessary to operate this vehicle.

This situation could not perturb the car owners, they complained to the prosecutor's office, judicial instances, including the highest. In particular, in 2015, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic repeatedly made submissions to the management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs on the elimination of violations of the requirements of the current legislation on the facts of illegal registration of registration plates by vehicles by traffic police officers. Only in the period from 2016 to December 2018, law enforcement officers prepared 1205 protocols on the prohibition of the use of vehicles with signs removed until the reason for the prohibition of their use was removed.

The authors of the legislative initiative conducted a comparative legal analysis of the legislation of the PMR and the Russian Federation in this sphere of legal relations to eliminate such a situation that lasts for years. The Russian Code of Administrative Offenses provides for only two types of interim measures in cases of administrative offenses. The first is to detain the vehicle and move it to the nearest specially designated guarded place (specialized parking) and store it there until the reason for the detention has been eliminated. The second is to detain the vehicle by stopping traffic with the help of blocking devices. Removal of state registration plates is not provided in the Russian legislation. This interim measure was excluded there in 2014. Moreover, on September 15 last year, by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, the right of the traffic police officers to remove state registration plates from vehicles in the event of a ban on their use due to violations was excluded from the provision on the traffic police.

Thus, in order to comply with the policy of harmonizing Pridnestrovian legislation with the Russian deputies of the Supreme Council, by a unanimous vote, they excluded from the CAO a rule such as prohibiting the use of a vehicle with removed state license plates.