All cards are revealed to the technical inspection – Newspaper Kommersant No. 69 (7514) dated 04/20/2023

The traffic police intends to give its employees the right to independently cancel diagnostic cards (documents confirming the passage of MOT). This is provided for by the draft government decree prepared by the police department. The reason may be a documented suspicion that the vehicle did not visit the inspection point. Now, in order to cancel the card, inspectors are waiting for the initiation of an administrative case or a court decision, which, as they make it clear in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, delays the procedure for combating fraudsters, and sometimes leads to registration and, consequently, the departure of vehicles that have not passed the check on the roads.

On April 19, the public discussion of the draft resolution of the Russian government on changing the rules for vehicle inspection ended. This procedure, we recall, has been adjusted in the Ministry of Internal Affairs in recent years in such a way as to stop the practice of buying diagnostic cards and oblige motorists to visit maintenance points. So, according to current regulations, vehicles must be photographed during the diagnostics. It is also obligatory to have an expert conducting the instrumental control procedure in the frame. Then the operator uploads the images to the Unified Information System for Technical Inspection (EAISTO) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Without this, an electronic diagnostic card will not be generated, which is necessary for concluding an OSAGO agreement.

However, scammers selling fake cards (the service costs 2–2.5 thousand rubles; tariffs for official maintenance – from 913 rubles to 1.5 thousand rubles, depending on the region), circumvent the requirements of the law. A number of companies, for example, using Photoshop, make fake pictures of cars that allegedly came for technical inspection. After that, documents are loaded into the system, and customers receive a card. When such cases are discovered by a traffic police officer, he has the right to cancel the document, and such a practice exists. However, now such actions should be taken simultaneously with the “decision” on holding the maintenance operator liable under Art. 14.4.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (a fine of up to 300 thousand rubles is appointed by the court). Such wording, according to Kommersant, leads to a delay in the process: local inspectors, for example, are waiting for the court decision to come into force or the initiation of an administrative case. At the same time, it can be difficult to initiate a case against a legal entity (TO operator): it is necessary to carry out a “control and supervisory measure” (for example, an on-site inspection or test purchase) in agreement with the prosecutor’s office. According to the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, in 2022, under Art. 14.4.1 Courts punished 1.3 thousand legal entities and 327 officials for various violations in the field of maintenance (including downloading fake cards), fined 190 million rubles.

The existing order “causes an ambiguous interpretation”, not allowing “quickly responding to violations,” representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs indicate in an explanatory note. As a result, vehicles that are actually not allowed to traffic get on the road, which “creates a threat to other road users.” The traffic police proposes to allow inspectors to cancel the card on their own within five days after detecting a fake (or any other violation), regardless of whether a case has been filed or not.

The diagnostic card, we recall, is mandatory for the movement of buses, trucks and taxis – for its absence, the violator faces a fine of 2 thousand rubles. For owners of passenger cars and motorcycles, a document is needed only when registering a car and when making changes to the design.

The head of the Techexpert union, Sergei Zaitsev, supported the proposal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, noting that it was time to “end the red tape in the fight against Photoshop.” He recalled another project that gives the traffic police the right to disconnect scammers from EAISTO (“Kommersant” wrote about him in September 2022, since then his fate is unknown): it must be adopted simultaneously with the simplification of the cancellation process.

“The initiative is good, only unfinished,” says Maxim Burdyugov, head of the Union of Technical Inspection Operators. The expert recalls that, according to the current rules, two canceled cards during the year give the Russian Union of Motor Insurers reason to deprive the TO operator of accreditation (in this case, he will not be able to work), but it is not clear whether the traffic police will notify the operator about the fate of the issued cards. The scheme proposed by the traffic police, according to Mr. Burdyugov, will lead to the fact that administrative cases against violators will not be brought at all, which “will give rise to impunity.” “We do not rule out that innovations in the future can become a serious lever of pressure from the Ministry of Internal Affairs against operators and, as a result, can lead to total corruption, so the initiative needs serious study,” says Maxim Burdyugov.

“On the one hand, such an amendment will make it possible to drastically reduce the number of unscrupulous market participants,” adds Andrey Borisenko, head of the Ermak TO Operators Association. “On the other hand, there is a risk that a corruption component will appear. Traffic police officers will have broad powers to cancel a card issued by a specific operator without trial and initiation of a case, in their own interests or in order to put pressure on some other operator.

Ivan Buranov