According to the law employers engaging highly skilled foreign specialists shall quarterly notify the structural subdivisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation about fulfilment of the obligations on salary payment, if such notification or submission of such notifications is required according to the Federal Law.
The company having applied to use for juridical assistance has sent such notifications, but with a considerable delay – in November of 2018 immediately by one mail for the first, second and third quarters of the same year. Administrative offence reports, responsibility for which is indicated in part 5 of art. 18.15 of the Administrative Offences Code of the Russian Federation, were drawn up in relation to the company. Upon expiration of some period of time the company has received four fines for total amount of 1.6 mln. RUB, as according to the decrees “the company has not notified about execution of the obligations on salary payment” for the first, second, third and forth quarters of 2018, and thus, it shall pay four times by 400 thous. RUB to the budget. By the way, for the forth quarter of 2018 notification was sent in time, however, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation didn’t have data about this due to unknown causes.
We applied to the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region with complaints for decrees about company bringing to the responsibility. When considering cases А56-57545/2019, А56-57569/2019, А56-57570/2019, А56-57567/2019 the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation recognized that notifications were received by it, but the Ministry couldn’t explain, why the company was brought to the responsibility particularly for “failure to notify”, but not for violation of the notification procedure.
It should be noted that according to part 5 of art. 18.15 of the Administrative Offences Code of the Russian Federation the guilty person can be brought to the responsibility for non-notification or for violation of the specified procedure and (or) notification form, i.e. for inaction or the certain actions. As it was determined, the Company was not inactive (anyway notifications were sent), due to this fact it can’t be brought to the responsibility for “non-notification” as per art. 24.5 of the Administrative Offences Code of the Russian Federation, as there is no the event of administrative offence.
The court has recognized the decrees to be illegal and cancelled them completely.
