FOURTH SECTION

DECISION

Application no . 49509/12 Robert ALASIPPOLA against Finland

The European Court of Human Rights ( Fourth Section ), sitting on 27 January 2015 as a Chamber composed of:

Guido Raimondi , President, Päivi Hirvelä , Ledi Bianku , Nona Tsotsoria , Zdravka Kalaydjieva , Paul Mahoney , Faris Vehabović , judges, and Françoise Elens-Passos, Section Registrar ,

Having regard to the above application lodged on 16 July 2012 ,

Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant,

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

THE FACTS

1. The applicant, Mr Robert Alasippola , is a Finnish national, who was born in 1966 and lives in Leppävesi . He was represented before the Court by Mr Markku Fredman , a lawyer practising in Helsinki .

2. The Finnish Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Mr Arto Kosonen of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs .

A. The circumstances of the case

3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.

Taxation proceedings

4. The applicant ’ s business was declared bankrupt in 2003 and he was subject to a tax inspection for the years 2003 and 2004. The tax inspection report was co mpleted on 4 June 2004. At the same time , the applicant ’ s wife was also subject to a tax inspection. She has lodged a separate application with the Court (no. 39771/12 Hanna Riikka Alasippola v. Finland ).

5. On 3 September 2004 the tax authorities imposed additional value ‑ added tax on the applicant a s well as tax surcharges ( veronkorotus , skatteförhöjning ) for the tax years 2001, 2002 and 2003.

6. On 9 September 2004 the tax authorities imposed additional income tax and tax surcharges on the applicant for the tax years 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. The amount of tax surcharges varied between 800 and 900 euros.

7. By letters dated 20 October 2004 and 1 February 2005 the applicant sought rectification from the local Tax Rectification Committee ( verotuksen oikaisulautakunta , prövningsnämnden i beskattningsärenden ), requesting it to quash the decisions of 9 September 2004.

8. On 21 February 2005 the Tax Rectification Committee rejected the applicant ’ s applications concerning the income tax imposed for the tax years 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003.

9. The applicant appealed against bo th the decisions of 3 September 2004 a nd the rectification decisions of 21 February 2005 to the Hämeenlinna Administrative Court ( hallinto-oikeus , förvaltnings - domstolen ).

10. On 26 June 2006 the Hämeenlinna Administrative Court rejected the applicant ’ s appeal s concerning the income tax imposed for the tax years 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003.

11. The applicant appealed against the decision of 26 June 2006 by the Hämeenlinna Administrative Court to the Supreme Administrative Court ( korkein hallinto-oikeus , högsta förvaltningsdomstolen ) but later withdrew his application. On 15 March 2007 the case was considered by the Supreme Administrative Court as lapsed.

12. On 4 October 2006 the Hämeenlinna Administrative Court rejected the applicant ’ s appeal s concerning the value-added tax imposed in respect of the tax years 2001, 2002 and 2003. It appears that no appeal was made against this decision.

Criminal proceedings

13. On 27 March 2009 the public prosecutor brought charges against the applicant , inter alia , f o r aggravated dishonesty by a debtor ( törkeä velallisen epärehellisyys , grovt oredlighet som gäldenär ) , false accounting ( kirjanpitorikos , bokföringsbrott ) and aggravated tax fraud ( törkeä veropetos , grovt skattebedrägeri ) concerning the tax years 1999 to 2003. According to the charges, the applicant was accused of aggravated dishonesty by a debtor as , between 1999 and 2002, he had transferred income to his wife to the detriment of his creditors. He was accused of false accounting between 1999 and 2003 as he had failed to make entries into the accounts. He was accused of aggravated tax fraud between 1999 and 2003 as he had failed to declare income and consequently, inter alia , the income tax and value-added tax i mposed on him had been too low. The tax authorities joined the charges and presented a compensation claim totalling approximately the amount of avoided taxes.

14. On 26 February 2010 the Keski -Suomi District Court ( käräjäoikeus , tingsrätten ) convicted the applicant of aggravated dishonesty by a debtor , false accounting and of aggravated tax fraud, and imposed a prison sentence of 1 year and 10 months. He was ordered to pay the tax authorities 135,417 euros (EUR) plus interest in compensation.

15. By letter dated 6 April 2010 the applicant appealed to the Vaasa Appeal Court ( hovioikeus , hovrätten ), requesting that the District Court judgment be quashed and the charges dismissed. He referred to the ne bis in idem principle and to the Court ’ s case-law in that respect.

16. On 31 October 2011 the Vaasa Appeal Court, after having held an oral hearing, upheld the District Court judgment. The court found that the mere fact that the same issues had been assessed in the administrative proceedings did not necessar il y prevent the examination of the charges pressed. After having compared the charges of aggravated tax fraud to the facts on the basis of which the tax surcharges had been imposed, by the type of tax imposed and the tax year concerned, the court found that the facts on which these charges were based were substantially different from those on which the tax surcharges had been based. There was thus no impediment to examining the charges against the applicant.

17. By letter dated 29 December 2011 the applicant appealed to the Supreme Court ( korkein oikeus , högsta domstolen ), reiterating the grounds of appeal already presented before the Appeal Court . He emphasi s ed that matters which had already been examined by the tax authorities could not be examined again in criminal proceedings.

18. On 31 January 2012 the Supreme Court refused the applicant leave to appeal excep t in respect of the charges concerning aggravated tax fraud.

19. On 19 December 2012 the Supreme Court dismissed the charge of aggravated tax fraud without examining the merits as far as the charge concerned income tax from the tax years 2000 to 2003 and value-added tax from the tax years 2001 to 2003, and withheld the relevant taxes. The applicant was convicted for the remaining part of the charge of aggravated tax fraud and sentenced, together with the earlier convictions, to imprisonment for 1 year and 4 months. The court found that , when considering the ne bis in idem prohibition , the similarity of the facts should be examined by the type of tax imposed and separately for each tax year. As concerned the tax year 1999, there was no impediment to examin ing the charge as the tax inspection did not concern the tax year 1999. However, concerning the tax year 2000, th e charge could not be examined, except in respect of value-added tax, as the same matter had already been subject to an assessment by the tax authorities. In respect of the tax year 2001 the charge could not be examined at all. The same applied for the tax years 2002 and 2003. The taxation decisions had all be come final before the charge of aggravated tax fraud, which concern ed the same matter , w as pressed. Therefore, the charge could only be examined in respect of the tax year 1999 and in respect of the value ‑ added tax imposed during the tax year 2000. This judgment has been published under number KKO 2012:106 .

B. Relevant domestic law and practice

20. Section 57, subsection 1, of the Tax Assessment Procedure Act ( laki verotusmenettelystä , lagen om beskattningsförfarande , Act no. 1558/1995, as amended by Act no. 1079/2005) provides that if a person has failed to make the required tax returns or has given incomplete, misleading or false information to the tax authorities and tax has therefore been incompletely or partially levied, the taxpayer shall be ordered to pay unpaid taxes together with additional tax and a tax surcharge.

21. According to Chapter 29, sections 1 and 2, of the Penal Code ( rikoslaki , strafflagen , as amended by Acts no. 1228/1997 and no. 769/1990), a person who (1) gives a tax authority false information on a fact that influences the assessment of tax, (2) files a tax return concealing a fact that influences the assessment of tax, (3) for the purpose of avoiding tax, fails to observe a duty pertaining to taxation, influencing the assessment of tax, or (4) acts otherwise fraudulently and thereby causes or attempts to cause a tax not to be assessed, or too low a tax to be assessed or a tax to be unduly refunded, shall be sentenced for tax fraud to a fine or to imprisonment for a period of up to two years. If by the tax fraud (1) considerable financial benefit is sought or (2) the offence is committed in a particularly methodical manner and the tax fraud is aggravated when assessed as a whole, the offender shall be sentenced for aggravated tax fraud to imprisonment for a period between four months and four years.

22. According to Chapter 39, sections 1 and 1a, of the Penal Code (as amended by Acts no. 61/2003 and no. 317/1994), a debtor who (1) destroys his or her property, (2) gives away or otherwise surrenders his or her property without acceptable reason, (3) transfers his or her property abroad in order to place it beyond the reach of his or her creditors or (4) increases his or her liabilities without basis and thus causes his or her insolvency or essentially worsens his or her state of insolvency, shall be sentenced for dishonesty by a debtor to a fine or to imprisonment for at most two years. If by the dishonesty by a debtor (1) considerable benefit is sought, (2) considerable or particularly substantial damage is caused to the creditors, or (3) the offence is committed in a particularly methodical manner and the dishonesty by a debtor is aggravated also when assessed as a whole, the offender shall be sentenced for aggravated dishonesty by a debtor to imprisonment for at least four months and at most four years.

23. The Supreme Court has taken a stand on the ne bis in idem principle in its precedent case KKO 2010:46 which concerned tax surcharges and aggravated tax fraud. In that case it found, inter alia , that even though a final judgment in a taxation case, in which tax surcharges had been imposed, prevented criminal charges being brought about the same matter, such preventive effect could not be a pplied to pending cases ( lis pendens ) crossing from administrative proceedings to criminal proceedings or vice versa. However, in July 2013 the Supreme Court reversed its line of interpretation, finding that charges for tax fraud could no longer be brought if there was already a decision to order or not to order tax surcharges in the same matter ( KKO 2013:59 ).

24. The Act on Tax Surcharges and Customs Duty Surcharges Imposed by a Separate Decision ( l aki erillisellä päätöksellä määrättävästä veron - tai tullinkorotuksesta , l agen om skatteförhöjning och tullhöjning som påförs genom ett särskilt beslut , Act no. 781/2013) enter ed into force on 1 December 2013. According to the Act, the tax authorities c an , when making a tax decision, assess whether to impose a tax surcharge or to report the matter to the police. The tax authorities c an decide not to impose a tax surcharge. If they ha ve not reported the matter to the police, a tax surcharge c an be imposed by a separate decision by the end of the calendar year following the actual tax decision. If the tax authorities ha ve imposed tax surcharges, they c an no longer report the same matter to the police unless, after imposing the tax surcharges, they ha ve received evidence of new or recently revealed facts. If the tax authorities ha ve reported the matter to the police tax surcharges c an , as a rule, no longer be imposed. The purpose of the Act is thus to ensure that a tax or a customs duty matter is processed and possibly punished in only one set of proceedings. The Act does not , however, contain any transitional provisions extending its scope retroactively.

COMPLAINT

25. The applicant complained under Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 to the Convention of a violation of the ne bis in idem principle. The taxation proceedings, in which tax surcharges had been imposed on him, had ended with a final decision on 15 March 2007 . The criminal proceedings had been initiated and concluded thereafter in the same matter.

THE LAW

26. The applicant complained under Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 to the Convention of a violation of the ne bis in idem principle.

27 . Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 to the Convention reads as follows:

“1. No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings under the jurisdiction of the same State for an offence for which he has already been finally acquitted or convicted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of that State.

2. The provisions of the preceding paragraph shall not prevent the reopening of the case in accordance with the law and penal procedure of the State concerned, if there is evidence of new or newly discovered facts, or if there has been a fundamental defect in the previous proceedings, which could affect the outcome of the case.

3. No derogation from this Article shall be made under Article 15 of the Convention.”

28. The Government observed that the applicant could no longer claim to be a victim under Article 34 of the Convention as the Supreme Court had specifically examined whether and to what extent the impugned proceedings concerned the same matter. It had dismissed the charges against the applicant without examining the merits to the extent that the trying of the charges would have amounted to a violation of the ne bis in idem principle. It had thus provided appropriate redress by way of terminating the second set of proceedings.

29 . The Government found it indisputable that both sets of proceedings, the criminal proceedings as well as those related to the tax surcharges, had been criminal in nature for the purposes of the Article relied on . However, the proceedings had been based on separate facts. The Supreme Court had convicted the applicant of aggravated tax fraud on account of his having avoided income and value-added tax for the tax year 1999 and value-added tax for the tax year 2000. No tax surcharges had been imposed at all for these tax years, or could not even be imposed as the right to tax had become statute-barred. As concerned the rest of the aggravated tax fraud charges, the Supreme Court had found the ne bis in idem effect applicable.

30 . Concerning the false accounting, the Government noted that the applicant ’ s conviction had been based on his failure to record entries required by law into the business accounts. Although the content of the false information and the grounds for the missing entries had been partly the same, the two sets of proceedings did not concern the same acts as the applicant had committed these acts concretely at different times and by different conduct. Also the effects of the acts had been mainly different.

31. As to the conviction of aggravated dishonesty by a debtor , the Government noted that such behaviour was criminalised in order to protect creditors in general against inappropriate transfers of assets during the debtor ’ s financial difficulties. When the applicant had concealed his lawfully received business income from the tax authorities, the act had also fulfilled the constituent elements of tax fraud. He had committed the offence by giving the tax authorities false information in his tax return. After having received the assets, he had transferred them to his wife. This transfer of the assets was not concretely the same act as providing false information to the tax authorities or failing to record entries required in the accounts.

32 . The Government further noted that, under well-established Finnish case-law, tax fraud, false accounting and dishonesty by a debtor fell under different scopes of res judicata . The offences injured different objects of legal protection, were committed concretely by different acts and caused damage to different actors. The parties injured by dishonesty by a debtor were the creditors. The charges for aggravated dishonesty by a debtor had not concerned taxes or a tax offence at all but had been founded on the suspicion that the applicant had transferred assets to his wife. The false accounting had been based on the applicant ’ s failure to record entries required by law into the business accounts . On the other hand, t he taxation proceedings had only concerned the compliance with the obligation to provide informat ion under taxation legislation.

33. The Government noted that the Supreme Court had examined the conduct of the applicant by tax year and by tax type. The Finnish tax system consisted of different types of taxes whose tax base and tax periods as well as the related procedural regulations differed from each other. Tax surcharges were imposed separately from different types of taxes, and the obligation to provide information applied to a specific tax period . Accordingly, the proceedings had been based on distinct matters, and the applicant had not been tried or punished twice in the same matter.

34. The applicant disagreed with the Government and argued that the Supreme Court ’ s approach of looking at the tax issues by calendar year was not relevant. The charges against the applicant had been based on actions lasting for years and they had to be considered as one act as far as Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 was concerned. In the Supreme Court case KKO 2007:102 the court had considered that several years of not declaring income constituted only one crime. The same applied also to different tax types. The applicant had been convicted of use of undeclared employment and for leaving the turnover gained through using such employment out of the accounts and taxation. It was one act which was impossible to commit only in respect of one tax type as it affected both value-added tax and income tax. One could not declare correct information to the tax authorities concerning one tax type and at the same time leave out the other. One could not be held guilty of tax fraud when the profit and loss account of the business was attached to the tax return if this attachment was correct: if one wanted to avoid taxes, the accounts given to the tax authority had to be incomplete. Therefore the false accounting was also to be considered to be the same act as tax fraud since the tax authorities were misled by a false closing of accounts. The applicant was thus still a victim of a breach of the Convention.

35 . The applicant claimed that in the tax proceedings he had been found guilty of one entity only which had had a beginning and an end. If this one entity had led to punishment, it could not be considered again in new proceedings. The ne bis in idem principle did not lose its meaning even if it turned out that the previous proceedings had not been effective or thorough enough. The alleged transfer of assets to the applicant ’ s wife had already been central in the tax audit which had formed the basis for taxation by estimation. Therefore it had formed the central part of charges in two consecutive sets of proceedings.

36. The applicant argued that the fact that an act could fulfil the constituent elements of several offences did not change the act itself, nor transform it into several different offences. If a person was convicted of theft, he could not be charged again with robbery even if the theft in question was committed by threatening the victim with a gun.

37 . The applicant pointed out that the domestic interpretation of res judicata was not relevant. The Court ’ s case-law in respect of Finnish ne bis in idem cases had shown that the domestic res judicata interpr e t at ion had not been in conformity with the requirements of Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 of the C onvention. No tax surcharges should be imposed in situations which could lead to criminal proceedings.

38. The Court notes first of all that , as to the criminal nature of the impugned proceedings, it is clear that the criminal proceedings for aggravated dishonesty by a debtor , false accounting and for aggravated tax fraud were criminal in nature.

39. As to the criminal nature of tax surcharge proceedings, t he Court reiterates that the legal characterisation of the procedure under national law cannot be the sole criterion of relevance for the applicability of the principle of ne bis in idem under Article 4 § 1 of Protocol No. 7. Otherwise, the application of this provision would be left to the discretion of the Contracting States to a degree that might lead to results incompatible with the object and purpose of the Convention (see for example StorbrÃ¥ten v. Norway ( dec. ), no. 12277/04 , ECHR 2007 ‑ ... ( extracts ), with further references). The notion of “penal procedure” in the text of Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 must be interpreted in the light of the general principles concerning the corresponding words “criminal charge” and “penalty” in Articles 6 and 7 of the Convention respectively (see Haarvig v. Norway ( dec. ), no. 11187/05 , 11 December 2007; Rosenquist v. Sweden ( dec. ), no. 60619/00 , 14 September 2004; Manasson v. Sweden ( dec. ), no. 41265/98 , 8 April 2003; Göktan v. France , no. 33402/96 , § 48, ECHR 2002-V; Malige v. France , 23 September 1998, § 35, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1998 ‑ VII; and Nilsson v. Sweden ( dec. ), no. 73661/01 , ECHR 2005 ‑ XIII).

40 . The Court ’ s established case-law sets out three criteria, commonly known as the “Engel criteria” (see Engel and Others v. the Netherlands , 8 June 1976, Series A no. 22), to be considered in determining whether or not there was a “criminal charge”. The first criterion is the legal classification of the offence under national law, the second is the very nature of the offence and the third is the degree of severity of the penalty that the person concerned risks incurring. The second and third criteria are alternative and not necessarily cumulative. This, however, does not rule out a cumulative approach where separate analysis of each criterion does not make it possible to reach a clear conclusion as to the existence of a criminal charge (see Jussila v. Finland [GC], no. 73053/01, § § 30-31 , ECHR 2006 ‑ XIV; and Ezeh and Connors v. the United Kingdom [GC], nos. 39665/98 and 40086/98 , §§ 82-86, ECHR 2003 ‑ X).

41 . The Court has taken a stand on the criminal nature of tax surcharges, in the context of Article 6 of the Convention, in the case Jussila v. Finland (cited above). In that case the Court found that, regarding the first criterion, it was apparent that the tax surcharges were not classified as criminal but as part of the fiscal regime. This was, however, not decisive but the second criterion, the nature of the offence, was more important. The Court observed that the tax surcharges were imposed by general legal provisions applying to taxpayers generally. Further, under Finnish law, the tax surcharges were not intended as pecuniary compensation for damage but as a punishment to deter re ‑ offending. The surcharges were thus imposed by a rule , the purpose of which was deterrent and punitive. The Court considered that this established the criminal nature of the offence. Regarding the third Engel criterion, the minor nature of the penalty did not remove the matter from the scope of Article 6. Hence, Article 6 applied under its criminal head notwithstanding the minor nature of the tax surcharge (see Jussila v. Finland [GC], cited above, §§ 37-38). Consequently, proceedings involving tax surcharges are “criminal” also for the purpose of Article 4 of Protocol No. 7.

42 . Therefore, in the present case, the Court considers that it is clear that both sets of proceedings are to be regarded as criminal for the purposes of Article 4 of Pr otocol No. 7 to the Convention. The parties also find this to be undisputed.

43 . Turning now to the question of whether the offences for which the applicant was prosecuted were the same ( idem ), t he Court has acknowledged in the case of Sergey Zolotukhin v. Russia (see Sergey Zolotukhin v. Russia [GC], no. 14939/03, §§ 81-84, ECHR 2009) the existence of several approaches to th is question. The Court presented an overview of the existing three different approaches to this question. It found that the existence of a variety of approaches engendered legal uncertainty incompatible with the fundamental right not to be prosecuted twice for the same offence. It was against this background that the Court provided in that case a harmonised interpretation of the notion of the “same offence” for the purposes of Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 to the Convention. In the Zolotukhin case the Court thus found that an approach which emphasised the legal characterisation of the two offences was too restrictive on the rights of the individual. If the C ourt limited itself to finding that a person was prosecuted for offences having a different legal classification, it risked undermining the guarantee enshrined in Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 rather than rendering it practical and effective as required by the Convention. Accordingly, the Court took the view that Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 had to be understood as prohibiting the prosecution or trial of a second “offence” in so far as it arose from identical facts or facts which were substantially the same. It was therefore important to focus on those facts which constituted a set of concrete factual circumstances involving the same defendant and inextricably linked together in time and space, the existence of which had to be demonstrated in order to secure a conviction or institute criminal proceedings.

44 . In the present case the parties disagree on whether the tax surcharge proceedings, on the one hand, and the criminal proceedings, on the other hand, arose from the same facts. The Court notes, first of all, that the applicant was party in his personal capacity to both sets of proceedings. T he tax surcharge proceedings arose from the fact that the applicant had given incomplete information to the tax authorities and, as a result, value-added tax had been incompletely or partially levied for the tax years 2001, 2002 and 2003, and income tax for the tax years 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. On the other hand, in the criminal proceedings the applicant was accused and convicted o f aggravated dishonesty by a debtor , false accounting and of aggravated tax fraud, all concerning the tax years 1999 to 2003 . According to the charges, the applicant was accused of aggravated dishonesty by a debtor as , between 1999 and 2002, he had transferred income to his wife to the detriment of his creditors. He was accused of false accounting between 1999 and 2003 as he had failed to make entries required by law in the business accounts. Moreover, he was accused of aggravated tax fraud between 1999 and 2003 as he had failed to declare income and consequently, inter alia , the income tax and value-added tax i mposed on him had been too low.

45 . As concerns the applicant ’ s charges and conviction f or false accounting, the Court has held on previous occasions (see Manasson v. Sweden ( dec. ), cited above; Carlberg v. Sweden , no. 9631/04, §§ 69-70, 27 January 2009; and Dev v. Sweden ( dec. ), § 51, no. 7362/10, 21 October 2014 ) that the obligation of a business person to enter correct figures in the books is an obligation per se , which is not dependent on the use of book - keeping material for the determination of tax liability. In other words an applicant , while not having fulfilled the legal book - keeping requirements, c an later have complied with the duty to supply the tax authority with sufficient and accurate information by , for instance, correcting the information contained in the books or by submitting other material which c an adequately form the basis of a tax assessment. The false accounting is thus sufficiently separate from the tax surcharge proceedings to conclude that these proceedings did not arise from i dentical facts or facts which were substantially the same.

46. The Court considers that the same holds true also for the charges and conviction f or aggravated dishonesty by a debtor . T he concrete act of committing this offence, namely the transfer(s) of assets to the applicant ’ s wife to the detriment of his creditors , is distinct in method, time and space from the failure to provide complete information to the tax authorities .

47. Turning now to the charges and conviction for aggravated tax fraud, the Court considers that the two impugned sets of proceedings arose from the same failure by the applicant to declare income and thus constituted a single set of concrete factual circumstances arising from identical facts or facts which were substantially the same. However, the Supreme Court dismissed the charge of aggravated tax fraud without examining the merits as far as the charge concerned income tax from the tax years 2000 to 2003 and value-added tax from the tax years 2001 to 2003, and withheld the relevant taxes. This judgment was based on the application of the ne bis in idem principle and on the finding by the Supreme Court that these issues had already been finally decided in the taxation proceedings. The Court finds the Supreme Court ’ s approach to examining the conduct of the applicant by tax year and by tax type acceptable: the tax declarations for income tax are made separately for every tax year and thus with clearly separate acts committed by the applicant. Income tax declarations also differ from the declaring of value-added tax which is done with a different form and normally on a monthly basis. The Court thus considers that the Supreme Court has remedied the applicant ’ s situation in this respect and that the applicant can no longer claim to be a victim of double jeopardy in this regard.

48. Lastly, the Court notes that the applicant was convicted of aggravated tax fraud only in respect of income tax and value-added tax concerning the tax year 1999 and value-added tax concerning the tax year 2000. Neither of these tax years and tax types was subject to any taxation proceedings. In this respect there are thus no other proceedings than the criminal proceeding against the applicant in which he was charged and convicted for these acts for the first time.

49. It follows therefore that the applicant ’ s application under Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court unanimously

Declares the application inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 19 February 2015 .

Françoise Elens-Passos Guido Raimondi Registrar President