No driving while indebted

The State Duma Committee on Constitutional Legislation and Construction of State supported the draft law, which will cancel the driver’s license in the case of non-payment of administrative fines, on Tuesday. Cancelling the possibility to use the public services may be the next step. The draft law was authored by Spravedlivaya Rossia members Alexander Agueev andAlexander Terentiev, Edinaya Rossia member Vyacheslav Lysakov and the Council of the Federation member Irina Guekht. The debtor, who does not timely pay the claims of first or second orders of a penalty, will lose the driver’s license. Such penalties include: child support, compensation for injury, compensation for the breadwinner’s death, moral damages, severance package payments, author’s fees and fines on the disputes on upbringing of children. According to the Committee, “the limitation on driving will give a positive effect, taking into account the wide use of personal automobiles by the citizens”. According to the Federal Bailiff Service, approximately 37% of the debtors have driver licenses, and the Service controls 233 billion roubles of unpaid debts. Therefore, the expected returns from the draft law exceed 60 billion roubles of recovered losses.

Alexander Bolomatov, Partner of the Law Firm "YUST", comments on the situation: «Limitation of the rights of the fined persons is allowed insofar as the rights to leave the country are concerned. The new measure will be efficient against those, who make no regular foreign trips, and will greatly increase the collected fine amounts – which does not mean that there is no need to reform the Federal Bailiff Service».