Information Note on the Court’s case-law 57

October 2003

Isaksen v. Norway (dec.) - 13596/02

Decision 2.10.2003 [Section III]

Article 4 of Protocol No. 7

Right not to be tried or punished twice

Conviction for tax fraud and imposition of a tax surcharge: inadmissible

In his capacity as manager of a company of which he was also the owner, the applicant was convicted, inter alia , of tax fraud, and sentenced to two a nd a half years imprisonment. Later, a tax surcharge of 60% concerning a period of six years was also imposed on him personally. The High Court granted leave to appeal against the sentence and reduced the sentence to two years, proceeding on the assumption that the applicant would have to pay the tax surcharge but in a way that the prohibition on being tried and punished twice for the same offence would not be infringed. Leave to appeal against this decision was refused by the Supreme Court. The tax surchar ge was later lowered from 60% to 30%. When the applicant had already started serving his sentence, the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in this area changed, considering as from then that a criminal case should be dismissed if the accused had already been sub jected to a tax surcharge of 60%, and that, for the purposes of Article 6 of the Convention, a 30% tax surcharge was a “criminal charge”. The applicant made several applications for release and for the reopening of the criminal proceedings, but a decision has not been taken yet. The Supreme Court held in another case that there was no justification for applying its jurisprudence retroactively.

Inadmissible under Article 4 § 1 of Protocol No. 7 – The applicant’s indictment and conviction for tax fraud relat ed to advantages benefiting the company he owned and managed, whereas the tax surcharges were imposed on account of tax advantages benefiting the applicant personally. Although there was a close nexus between the company’s and his own tax evasion, the sanc tions concerned two distinct legal entities. The offences in question were entirely separate and differed in their essential elements: manifestly ill-founded.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind t he Court.

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