On September 22nd the Thirteenth Arbitration Court of Appeal will consider the complaint of Rospotrebnadzor on the decision, adopted on July 2nd, according to which banned products can be sold in Russian stores.
Earlier, the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region declared as illegal the fine imposed on the JSC 'Tander' for selliw Sirtaki cheese, made in France, in the Magnit store. According to the court, "the government has envisaged a restriction on the importation of certain products, not its realization (sale)," RIA Novosti reports.
In addition, the judge decided that the import of banned products to Russia does not constitute the objective side of the offense, the responsibility for which is stipulated by article 14.2 of the Administrative Code (illegal sale of goods).
A research fellow at the center for agrarian and food policy at RANEPA, Vasily Uzun, told Vestnik Kavkaza that it is unlikely that the sale of banned products will be resolved.
"I think that if they prove that the product was imported illegally, then there are no chances of winning the case. You could say that the import is banned, not the sale, only when the ban had been introduced, because there were already imported products," he explained.
Uzun added that it is not always easy to determine the legality or illegality of the importation of goods in reality. "We need to find out through which borders the products were imported to Russia, because we imposed an embargo, but our allies in the EurAsEC have not. That is, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia have the right to import European products. And the borders between our countries are open," the expert noted.
Another difficult question, according to the research fellow at the center for agrarian and food policy at RANEPA concerns processed products. "It is not known whether a change of packaging makes the product Russian," he said.
In addition, Vasily Uzun criticized the recent decision to physically destroy banned products. "We have the opportunity to send it to Donbass, and there are a lot of hungry people in the world," the expert said.
"In general, this issue should be approached with caution. The best solution here is to lift the embargo, because, first of all, we are suffering from it," he concluded.
Academician and member of the RANEPA Academic Council, Doctor Elmira Krylatyh, in her turn, said that, from her point of view, we shouldn't allow banned products in stores. "Of course, it is illogical to sell illegal products, because there is a competition with illegally acquired products," she said.
The expert also negatively assessed the decision to destroy illegally imported products, noting that they could be used for charitable purposes. "You can, bypassing the retail chains, support low-income families," Krylatyh said.
"At the same time, violators sell it should be punished," the expert added.
