Russia Legal News Blast, Jan. 25, 2011

The Highest Arbitrazh court has announced today that it will hear the final appeal in the famous case of Domodedovo airport v. Vnukovo airport on March 15, 2011. Domodedovo airport has been successful in recovery of more than 350 million rubles ($10 million) from Vnukovo airport. The latter has assumed all debts if URAIR air company gone bankrupt some time ago. The recovered money were due for ground services in Domodedovo.

The chairwoman of the Moscow City court of general jurisdiction Olga Yegorova has announced the statistics of the Moscow courts for the last year.  In 2010, Moscow’s general jurisdiction courts heard 579,759 cases, representing a 12% decrease compared with 2009. The largest share of criminal cases constituted drug-related cases (22%), among civil cases the most popular are those related to housing disputes (27%), while 60% of all administrative cases were the cases related to deportations of illegal immigrants from Russia.

The Ministry of Justice has issued a new version of rules concerning “alternative” types of punishment (that is, not related to prison sentences). The expanding practice of imposing sentences involving “alternative” punishments is meant to alleviate overpopulation in the Russian prisons. The current prison population in Russia is slightly less than 1.5 million or about 1% of population.