The Russian Ministry of Finance has prepared a legislative initiative that will provide customs services with expanded powers to control commercial transport. The document, which was reviewed by the Logirus publication, eliminates the existing legal uncertainty in the issues of stopping vehicles.
Currently, the current legislation contains contradictory norms. On the one hand, customs officers have the right to independently stop vehicles with a maximum permissible weight of more than 3.5 tons in customs control zones. On the other hand, stopping light commercial vehicles and in other cases requires the mandatory participation of police officers, which creates organizational difficulties and slows down the implementation of control measures.
The new bill proposes to eliminate the rule obliging customs authorities to involve police officers to stop transport. The explanatory note to the document emphasizes that the assignment of additional duties to the police is possible only through amendments to the federal legislation "On the police", and not through interdepartmental agreements that currently regulate this process.
At the same time, the initiative introduces changes to the rules for the storage of vehicles and goods placed in a temporary storage warehouse. The current regulations provide for storage until the expiration of the permitted period or until the time of the customs authority's report. The bill expands this list by adding the event of the conversion of property into federal ownership, which is logically consistent with the subsequent parts of the article regulating the procedure for the transfer of unclaimed goods to the state.
The document pays special attention to the algorithm of actions of customs authorities in detecting violations of legislation outside their competence. If there are goods or vehicles with signs of such violations in storage, the customs service is obliged to transmit the information to the relevant federal agency. At the same time, the goods themselves must be returned to the owner within the prescribed time, if there are no grounds for their withdrawal.
The composition and procedure for transmitting information to the Federal Customs Service will have to be determined jointly with the relevant departments. This will create an effective system of interagency cooperation and eliminate duplication of functions.
The bill also provides for shortening the period for publishing information about unclaimed goods on the official website of the customs service from 60 to 30 days, which will speed up procedures and reduce the load on storage facilities.
According to sources, the government commission on legislative activity has already approved the document, subject to the elaboration of individual proposals. It is expected that the adoption of these changes will increase the effectiveness of customs control, simplify the procedures for checking commercial vehicles and strengthen the fight against violations of customs legislation.
