Maxim Ali has commented for Izvestia on court ruling on lawsuit against illegal mining

Maxim Ali - Partner

Commercial Court of the Irkutsk Region has dismissed the claim of the Church of Evangelical Christians “Blagodat” for compensation of 1.1 million rubles, which the organization paid to Irkutskenergosbyt. Having identified signs of mining, Irkutskenergosbyt switched  the Church of Evangelical Christians “Blagodat” to a different category of payers. Previously, under the contract, it was subject to the “consumers equated to the population, located in an urban settlement” tariff.

Maxim Ali, Partner and Head of Intellectual Property and Information Law practice at Maxima Legal, told Izvestia that the court ruling does not appear to have made it particularly difficult for the energy companу to gather evidence. Therefore, there is no point in making any changes to the existing legislation in order to facilitate court practice in such cases.

“As we can see from this case, ‘ordinary’ legislation was quite sufficient to resolve the dispute,” Maxim stressed. According to the expert, difficulties could arise if someone created fake legal entities known to be insolvent – then Irkutskenergosbyt would unlikely be able to defend its interests without help from law enforcement agencies.

To read the full article (in Russian) please see Izvestia website >>>