Business Ombudsman Titov asked the Ministry of Economy to unify the procedure for challenging the warnings of controllers

Business is asking the government to rid it of the bureaucracy in challenging issued warnings in the process of control and supervision. Now, for different types of control, the procedures for filing objections are different, while fines can follow warnings. A letter with a request to unify the procedure was sent to the Ministry of Economy by business ombudsman Boris Titov. However, the department does not see any problems: there were no complaints from business, and the warning itself is a preventive tool and does not bear negative consequences for business. Probably, the government does not want to tear controllers away from more relevant work for the time being – creating indicators of the risk of violations, without them, inspections of companies are limited by a moratorium.

Business Ombudsman Boris Titov sent a letter to the head of the Ministry of Economy Maxim Reshetnikov with a request to simplify the filing of objections to the warnings of the control and supervisory authorities (CND), now entrepreneurs can do this, but the procedure for filing and considering an objection to a warning in the Law “On State Control” (248 -FZ) is not defined – the details are given to the discretion of the control authorities and are established by the departmental regulation on the type of control. In practice, this leads to the fact that for different types of control, the procedures for filing and considering objections differ. “Control and supervisory authorities often respond to clarifying requests from entrepreneurs not with a direct answer, but with an indication of the clauses of the regulation on the type of control (supervision), which makes it difficult to clarify the rules and deadlines for filing an objection and leads to their omission,” says Boris Titov, referring to the appeal Elena Gnetova, commissioner for the protection of the rights of entrepreneurs from Karelia, came to him.

Business expects that the government will introduce uniform deadlines for filing objections to warnings and their consideration for all types of control. It is also proposed to develop a single format for a document on the results of consideration of objections – a decision to cancel the warning or to fully or partially refuse to satisfy the objection.

As an alternative to unification, a variant is proposed when the deadlines for filing objections, the filing procedure and the regulations for the actions of control and supervisory authorities would be indicated directly in the text of the warning.

The Ministry of Economy told Kommersant that the warning is not a fixation of a violation, but a warning about its possibility. “At the same time, the warning itself does not carry any negative consequences, that is, fines or checks,” the department notes. They note that neither business nor regulatory authorities have received complaints about the warnings to the ministry. The office of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko, who oversees the CPV reform, notes that the law on state control establishes information that must and cannot be indicated in the warning. “The document has already, one might say, unified. The direction of objections to such warnings is the right of controlled persons, and therefore the unification of the deadlines for their submission and consideration is inappropriate, ”they add.

A warning is a preventive tool, it is issued up to a fine for violating the requirements. Difficulties in challenging false warnings, however, may bring real sanctions closer. However, at this stage, it is also possible to challenge the decision of the controllers (including the issuance of an initial warning) as part of a pre-trial appeal in digital form, that is, the authorities have already built a convenient system of challenging at the end of the CPV chain, and again distract the departments, sometimes with difficulty risk-based approach, improved prevention is not yet ready.

Now controllers are busy developing risk indicators, without which unscheduled inspections cannot be carried out (see “Kommersant” dated May 29).

However, the government, for its part, is ready to create a comfortable business environment: in order to quickly file objections to a warning on the public services portal in the Control and Supervision section, an appropriate service is already being developed.

Diana Galieva