Published on 20 November 2023

SECOND SECTION

Application no. 29895/16 EPIDAVR S.R.L. against the Republic of Moldova lodged on 21 May 2016 communicated on 2 November 2023

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The applicant is a company specialised in the sale of consumer goods. The case concerns searches carried out on the applicant company’s professional premises.

In the course of criminal proceedings on charges of tax evasion, on 5 November 2015 the investigating judge authorised searches of the applicant company’s headquarters, sale points and warehouses in a total of four locations, ordering the seizure of accounting documents for 2010 to 2015, invoices, contracts, the list of employees and documents related to their salaries, servers, hard disks and other information carriers, seals of companies from off-shore zones, money and other objects having served for criminal activity. All the search warrants had identical content.

The applicant company appealed against the search warrants, arguing that it had no procedural standing in the criminal proceedings when the searches had been ordered, there was no reasonable suspicion that it had committed a crime, the search warrants did not include any relevant reasons and were formulated in extremely broad terms which gave unfettered discretion to the investigator to search for anything he wanted, and also because as a result of the seizure the company was unable to operate. On 19 November 2015 the Chișinău Court of Appeal rejected the applicant company’s appeal in respect of one search warrant as manifestly ill-founded (the decision was sent to the applicant on 27 November 2015). On 24 and 30 November 2015 and 14 December 2015 the same court found that the three other search warrants were unlawful because the applicant company had no procedural standing in the criminal proceedings and because the warrants were insufficiently reasoned and were formulated in extremely broad terms.

The applicant company complains under Articles 6 and 8 of the Convention and under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention of the unlawfulness of the search warrants and because the company was unable to operate once its assets had been unlawfully seized.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Has there been an interference with the applicant company’s right to respect for home and correspondence, within the meaning of Article 8 § 1 of the Convention, as a result of the search warrants? If so, was that interference in accordance with the law and necessary in terms of Article 8 § 2? In particular, did the search warrants of 5 November 2015 contain sufficient and adequate reasoning justifying interference with the applicant company’s commercial premises (see Mancevschi v. Moldova , no. 33066/04, §§ 45-48, 7 October 2008; Posevini v. Bulgaria , no. 63638/14, §§ 65-66, 19 January 2017)?

2. Has there been an interference with the applicant company’s peaceful enjoyment of possessions, within the meaning of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention by the seizure and retention of its assets? If so, did that interference impose an excessive individual burden on the applicant company (see Smirnov v. Russia , no. 71362/01, §§ 53-59, 7 June 2007)?