Legal issue: whether the constitutional rights of the applicant (a legal entity) were violated by the rules of legislation, which make the amount of fine for the failure to declare a commodity at customs dependent upon such insufficiently clear notion as market value of this commodity in the Russian Federation?
Ratio decidendi: the Court took into account its Decree of 13 July 2010 № 15-П, in which the same issue arose with regard to natural persons, importing goods for their own consumption. In that case the Court deemed it impossible to determine the amount of sanction by way of market price, and rules that customs value (an acquisition price) ought to be used instead. However, in the present decree, which dealt with legal entities, the Court took a different view: the federal legislator has the right to establish a higher degree of liability for legal entities, than for natural persons, while a legal entity must have an idea of marker value of the goods which it transfers across the border, and equally should be aware of the liability for non-declaring or improper declaring of goods at their importation into the customs territory of Russia, having recourse, when necessary, to the assistance of experts. Therefore, the contested provisions do not contradict the Constitution.