A panel of seven judges at Strasbourg have unanimously concluded that the Russian judiciary violated the European Convention of Human Rights, specifically Article 5, which guarantees the right to freedom and security, and Article 18, regulating the application of restrictions on human rights.
The Strasbourg Court has decided that the recognition of breach of the Convention gives enough grounds for honoring Gusinsky's claim for damages. It has also ruled that the Russian government should pay 88,000 euros to Gusinsky and his defense lawyers in compensation for litigation expenses. Being party to the European Human Rights Convention, Russia has to obey decisions of the Strasbourg Court.
Mikhail Grishankov, chair of the Anti-Corruption Committee in the State Duma, or Russia's lower house of parliament, qualified Gusinsky's complaint with the Strasbourg Court as an attempt to divert attention from the investigation into his alleged crimes.
The European Human Rights Court does not know all the circumstances surrounding the case, and hands down a decision that is based on emotion rather than analysis, Grishankov said in a RIA interview. The tycoon is charged with defrauding the Russian state out of large amounts of money, the MP recalled.
Former owner of Russia's first private channel, NTV, and of the financial group MOST, Gusinsky has spent the past few years in self-imposed exile. Repeated attempts by the Prosecutor General's Office to bring the tycoon to justice have so far ended in failure, with the governments of Spain and Greece refusing to extradite him to the Russian judiciary.
