Around 500 lawsuits have been submitted to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against Russia after it annexed Crimea. The most of the lawsuits concern protection of rights of individuals and it is expected that companies would soon file a large number of lawsuits.
Deputy Head of the civil, family and inheritance law of the Ukrainian Bar Association (UBA) Iryna Moroz gave the forecast to Interfax-Ukraine.
“Despite the flaws of the court process in the ECHR, one can expect a rise in the number of lawsuits filed against Russia in the near term. Thousands of Ukrainian companies that lost their assets in Crimea are at the stage of searching or waiting for effective mechanisms for getting compensation,” the lawyer said.
Moroz said that there are several law mechanisms to receive compensation for assets lost after annexation of Crimea. The most popular option is to apply to the investment arbitration under the agreement on mutual protection of investment signed by the Ukrainian and Russian governments.
“Application to the ECHR is sidelined and considered ineffective because of the absence of a guaranteed mechanism for getting compensation and the duration of the court procedure. However, the application of the investment agreement brings difficulties in proving basic notions required to confirm jurisdiction of the investment arbitration action,” she said.
She said that the claimant faces the problem of proving the following notions: investor, investment, territory as it is spelled out in the agreement signed by the two countries.
When lawsuits are filed to the ECHR against Russia, the long procedure for passing all possible defense mechanisms in the national courts of Russia precedes this. It is possible to pass all court instances in Russia during one year and then claimants can file lawsuits to the ECHR.
Moroz said that the advantage of filing lawsuits to the ECHR is free-of-charge court hearings and expenses are limited to expenses on lawyers. The disadvantage is that the procedure could last up to 10-12 years.
