Principal facts
The applicant, Galina Todorova Patrikova, is a Bulgarian national who was born in 1967 and lives in Isperih (Bulgaria).
A businesswoman, Ms Patrikova formerly traded in alcohol and tobacco, considered excise duty products under Bulgarian tax law. Following an inspection by Razgrad tax authority on 6 June 2000, merchandise worth the equivalent of 150,000 euros (EUR) was seized, including a significant quantity of tobacco and 98,502 bottles of alcohol. On 27 June 2000 the tax authority issued the applicant with a fine of 221,139 Bulgarian levs (approximately EUR 115,000) on the ground that she only had a trading license and should have obtained a separate license for storage of excise duty products. That decision was ultimately quashed in October 2001 on the ground that the relevant law did not require separate storage licenses. That decision was upheld in January 2002.
Criminal proceedings brought against the applicant for various tax offences, including tax evasion, illicit trading in excise goods and forged tax labels were ultimately dropped in March 2003 due to lack of evidence. There has been no progress in the criminal proceedings, continued against persons unknown, since that time. The authorities ordered the retention of the alcoholic beverages as evidence in the criminal proceedings.
The retained merchandise was inspected in the tax authority’s storage house on 27 February 2002; it was noted that there were 52,118 bottles of alcohol.
In the meantime the applicant made numerous requests to convince the tax administration to sell the merchandise before it became non-marketable or unfit for consumption; she had no reply.
On 2 March 2002 all tobacco products were returned to her. She refused, however, to collect the bottles of alcohol as, in her view, the state of the merchandise should be assessed beforehand. She subsequently made repeated attempts to have the remaining merchandise and the value of the missing and damaged bottles assessed, in vain. Despite negotiations on the matter, on 12 April 2004 an order was issued under the relevant provision of the Tax Proceedings Code declaring the merchandise as abandoned property and acquired by the State. The applicant appealed, stating that the goods had not been abandoned. In May 2006 the courts quashed the acquisition order in so far as it concerned the 52,118 bottles, finding that it was irrelevant whether the applicant had abandoned them or not as they had been seized as evidence in criminal proceedings and the tax authorities did not have the power to release them. As concerned the remainder of the bottles, the courts subsequently found that the tax authorities had automatically acquired as abandoned the merchandise because the applicant had not sought to recover it within the time limit of nine months set by the Tax Procedure Code.
On 17 May 2002 the applicant brought a civil claim for damages against the Razgrad tax authority, the police and the prosecuting authorities for unlawful seizure of her merchandise and failure to market it before its expiry date. She claimed the full value of the alcohol. Those proceedings have been adjourned on numerous occasions – due to failure to summon some of the parties, failure of the defendant State bodies to provide access to relevant documents and delays in the work of the court-appointed experts – and, the last scheduled hearing being 16 September 2009, are currently still pending at first instance.
The applicant’s business was declared insolvent in 2006.
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