Call to account: why the Constitutional Court commuted the sentences of hijackers
The Constitutional Court clarified the situation with the lenient sentence handed down in Taganrog in the case of car theft by a car wash employee. The car was wrecked as a result of the incident, but the defendant was ordered to pay only 762 thousand rubles, although the full repair of the affected car was estimated at 1.97 million rubles. The Constitutional Court's ruling states that when considering a criminal case, only the proven value of the damage at the time of the crime is important. Expenses for restoration are collected separately in a civil procedure. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
"Murky" schemes
The number of carjackings in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Interior Ministry, decreased by 9.4% to 2005, but spontaneous incidents continue to hit owners. Experts often manipulate estimates by obtaining tenders through connections with appraisal firms, where the difference between the "criminal" minimum and real repairs becomes their profit.
At the moment, the investigator can appoint an expert himself. And in practice, due to the actions of unscrupulous law enforcement officers in collusion with the accused and experts, the amount of damage may be underestimated, says Alexander Seregin, a lawyer at the Moscow Region Bar Association. This may affect the reclassification of the charge to the milder part of Article 166 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
The main problem today is weak regulation and the actual lack of real responsibility of experts, which is why conclusions are often subjective, emphasizes Olga Ugozhaeva, General Director of the Union of the Federation of Evaluators.
"Forensic experts, in particular automotive experts, may not comply with the requirements of federal assessment standards, depending on how the court formulated a specific question that needs to be answered," she explains.
Such experts may not even have the appropriate assessment education and qualifications, which leads to non-compliance with generally accepted calculation methods and assessment standards, warns Elena Grinberg, head of the Department for pre-trial settlement and interaction with the financial commissioner of RESO-Garantia.
At the same time, the amount of damage caused directly affects the criminal qualification of the act, she clarifies.
— The message of the Constitutional Court's ruling is that questions about ways to compensate for harm, for example, whether it is possible to repair a vehicle using cheaper or more expensive methods, should not be resolved within the framework of a criminal case. Therefore, the minimum cost is taken — everything else is disputed," explains the interlocutor of Izvestia.
A controversial issue
As a result, regional hijackers, such as in the Taganrog case, leave with minimal time due to "wear and tear", and car owners have to sue them for small amounts in civil courts, proving the damage, Alexander Seregin emphasizes.
"It is advisable for the victim to independently order a damage assessment from a qualified and conscientious specialist and submit it to the case file, personally or through a lawyer," the lawyer advises.
Even if the investigator appoints his own examination, if there are significant discrepancies, there will be grounds to raise the issue of verifying the expert's conclusions and the investigator's procedural actions, said Oleg Baulin, Vice President of the Federal Chamber of Lawyers of the Russian Federation.
"The fact that the damage is assessed to a minimum as real in the framework of criminal proceedings does not deprive a citizen of the right to recover expenses incurred for the restoration of a car in a civil procedure," he recalls, emphasizing that the balance of private and public interests is often respected due to this.
By the way, in practice, it is not uncommon for victims to seek to maximize the amount of damage in criminal proceedings (claiming the calculation without taking into account wear and tear) in order to qualify the act for the more serious part of the theft article, the press service of the All-Russian Public Organization Drivers of Russia adds.
"This is based on the assumption that the threat of prolonged imprisonment (for example, up to 10 years under Part 3 of Article 166 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) will act as an effective lever of pressure for prompt compensation for harm," the organization explains.
However, this approach does not take into account the legal realities of enforcement proceedings, where the subject of crimes is often a citizen who does not have an official income or liquid property.
Unfair approach
According to Ingosstrakh, in 2025, the popular Lada Granta and Hyundai Solaris were among the top 5 most stolen models in Russia. And the new COP formula, according to experts, hits the mass car owner: sanctions have "inflated" the prices of spare parts for Korean cars by 42%, for domestic cars — by 38.5%. The actual repair exceeds the "criminal" minimum, taking into account wear and tear, falling short of major damage.
"It all depends on economics and the calculation methodology used by experts in both civil and criminal cases, based on the reference books of the Russian Union of Motor Insurers," explains Alexander Seregin. — They often do not correlate with the market: catalog prices that do not correspond to reality are used, wear (up to 50%) and underestimated standard hours are taken into account.
The conclusion of the Constitutional Court on the need to use the minimum proven value of the stolen vehicle or the amount of damage it sustained, taking into account the degree of car wear, seems unfair to Olga Ugozhaeva.
"It is possible to establish a real, rather than a "hypothetical minimum" amount of losses immediately, and not as part of a reassessment by the victim himself," she emphasizes.
At the same time, the decision of the Constitutional Court will not significantly affect the statistics of hijackings without the purpose of theft, predicts Amiran Abdulmalikov, director of the Renaissance Insurance Corporate Security Department. After all, most often these are spontaneous, ill-conceived crimes in which a person does not assess whether he will be liable under the relatively mild part 1 of article 166 or under part 3 of the same article, which is imputed in case of particularly large-scale damage.
Izvestia sent requests to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Justice, the Russian Union of Motor Insurers and the State Duma. No responses had been received at the time of publication.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
