Officials in the Chelyabinsk region face a 20 thousand euro charge for not following a court order.
Vladimir Tsarelungo, an activist from Yasnaya Polyana, took legal action in the Chelyabinsk region seeking recompense for the inconvenience caused by the failure to implement a court decision made eight years ago. The court had ordered the Yasnye Polyany administration to restore water supply to houses along Lenin Street, including Tsarelungo's. Because this was not done, Tsarelungo pursued compensation from officials through the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.
Vladimir Tsarelungo explained that his house, along with three others on Lenin Street in Yasnye Polyany, previously received water from a well at an administrative building. The well had been built by residents to provide water to their homes, hospitals, and other facilities.
Vladimir Tsarelungo recalled that in 2013, the head of the Troitsky district ordered their houses to be disconnected from the water supply so that water could be redirected to the school and store. This happened because a tower meant for providing water to the entire settlement was sold for scrap, instead of just needing a pump replacement. Tsarelungo fought the administration over this issue, but they were ultimately left without water.
After the residents lodged a complaint with the district prosecutor’s office, the supervisory agency filed a lawsuit against the administration of Yasnaya Polyana to restore water supply to the houses along Lenin Street. The court ruled in favor of the prosecutor’s office on December 13, 2013, and ordered the municipality to restore the water supply by November 1, 2014. The decision was upheld by the Chelyabinsk Regional Court on February 27, 2014, but the requirement to construct a water pipeline from an existing well was removed from the verdict.
Since then, eight years have passed without the court’s decision being enforced. Vladimir Tsarelungo later discovered the reason for this.
Vladimir Tsarelungo found out that 96 houses on Lenin Street, rather than just the four involved in the initial court case, were impacted by the enforcement proceedings. Before this, he had believed that the court decision only applied to the four houses that submitted the collective application to the prosecutor’s office in 2013.
The court ordered the settlement administration to provide centralized water supply to all houses, even those that never had it. This made the administration's obligations 24 times bigger. The village administration found this unbearable because it required funding that the settlement did not have.
The prosecutor's office and the courts did not fully consider all the details of the case at the time. They didn't take into account that most houses on Lenin Street in Yasnye Polyany didn't have centralized water supply when the court made its decision. Despite this, Vladimir Tsarelungo believes his legal rights were violated, so he took the case to court.
He sued the administration of the Troitsky district, not the settlement, because after January 1, 2015, organizing water supply in settlements became the responsibility of municipal districts.
Vladimir Tsarelungo stated that due to the very long period of non-compliance with the court's decision, he should be compensated. According to the European Court of Human Rights, this compensation could be 20,000 euros, converted to rubles using the exchange rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation at the time of the court's decision.
He submitted the document to the Troitsky District Court, which then sent it to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation as required by the Administrative Procedure Code. However, the document was returned to him by the same judge who ruled on the prosecutor's office's case in 2013. The judge stated that the plaintiff chose the wrong court and should have sent the claim to the Chelyabinsk Regional Court. Tsarelungo was asked to correct the violations by sending the claim to the regional court, paying the state fee, and then sending it back to the Troitsky District Court for further proceedings.
Vladimir Tsarelungo
Tsarelungo expressed surprise that the judge returned the claim instead of forwarding it to the Supreme Court within three days, as is typically done with a judicial act. He believes that only a judge of the Supreme Court could have made such a decision.
The applicant believes the judge is trying to cover up the fact that she made an unjust decision in 2013 without fully understanding the situation.
Alexander Lebin, who was the head of the administration of the Yasnaya Polyana rural settlement at that time, partly agrees with this. However, he thinks that the decision was intentional.
Alexander Lebin believes that the judge made a decision that the settlement administration couldn't possibly fulfill. He faced administrative responsibility and warnings from bailiffs multiple times because of this decision. He thinks this decision was made to create insurmountable obstacles in his work, ultimately leading to his dismissal from the head of the administration.
According to the ex-official, the administration of the settlement applied to the Troitsky District Court with applications to terminate the enforcement proceedings, to replace the defendant in the enforcement proceedings, to clarify the court decision, to postpone the execution of the court decision. All these appeals were rejected by Judge Cheretskikh.
The head of the Troitsky district, Timur Mukhamedyarov, told Znak.com that he did not yet know about Vladimir Tsarelungo’s lawsuit, but had previously communicated with him on this topic and was aware of the problem.
“Eight years ago, in the village of Yasnye Polyany, they switched from a centralized source of water supply to several autonomous ones. I didn’t deal with these issues then and I don’t know why this happened,” the head of the district says. “Today I have an unenforced court decision that we are working on. We are developing a plan for its implementation with specialists from the UZHKH. Although today there are no mass complaints about the lack of water in Yasnye Polyany. Most residents have autonomous sources of water supply. Although there may be disadvantages related to water quality. In any case, a solution will be found.”
