Disablement right – Newspaper Kommersant No. 170 (7371) dated 09/15/2022

The police will have the right to disconnect maintenance operators who have issued a diagnostic card for a car that has not actually passed an instrumental check from the technical inspection information system. This provides for a draft resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers prepared by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The agency will be able to use, in fact, a pre-trial mechanism for blocking the work of unscrupulous businesses whose work threatens traffic safety. Representatives of the industry conceptually supported the idea, but drew attention to the possible risks of corruption and called for the return of the status of maintenance as a mandatory procedure for every motorist.

Innovations in the field of maintenance control are provided by a draft government decree, which was published yesterday by the Ministry of Internal Affairs on regulation.gov.ru. The document contains, for the most part, technical amendments related to the planned transfer of authority for accreditation of TO operators from the Russian Union of Motor Insurers to Rosakkreditatsiya. “Kommersant” spoke about this initiative more than once: the anchor document is a bill approved by the government and supported by business, now it is in the White House apparatus. The government wants the State Duma to adopt the amendments before November 1, 2022, with their entry into force in 2023 (the deadlines are fixed in the road map).

Meanwhile, the normative act provides the Ministry of Internal Affairs with new opportunities to combat fraudsters in the TO market. Recall that from December 2021, cars older than four years must be inspected only upon re-registration to a new owner or in the event of a change in the design of the car. Some citizens buy an electronic diagnostic card from gray companies without providing a car for verification. According to the rules, we recall that in order to issue a card, a photograph of the car at the TO point next to the technical expert must be entered into the information system of the technical inspection of the EAISTO Ministry of Internal Affairs. Fraudsters, using photomontage, insert customers’ cars into the interior of inspection points (in professional slang, such firms are already called “photoshoppers”). The police detect such cases by canceling illegally issued cards, terminating the registration of a car and starting administrative cases against operators. According to unofficial data, more than 20 thousand such cases are known since March 2021. But the police can not quickly stop the activities of such companies.

The published draft provides that if two or more facts of issuing fake cards are detected within a year, the traffic police will be able to disconnect the operator from EIASTO. That is, in fact, to block the possibility of issuing cards even before an administrative case is opened, before a decision is made to cancel the accreditation certificate. A similar mechanism will apply if the operator ceases to operate as a legal entity.

“From the point of view of the fight against fraudsters, the decision is rather the right one,” says Igor Volchek, head of the Maintenance Operators Guild at the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “But it is not yet very clear how this may affect the lives of conscientious operators. Yes, and it is not easy to objectively prove that a particular car did not come to the maintenance point. I hope the Ministry of Internal Affairs has such an opportunity.” “The Ministry of Internal Affairs wants to stop the work of operators with a good intention – to get rid of the sellers of diagnostic cards,” adds Ivan Kekin, head of the technical inspection point in the Krasnoyarsk Territory (operator of Mars LLC). but it will turn out “as always”. Will the police officers get an undisguised lever of influence on the controlled territory as a result? What will be done so that new corruption schemes do not arise with the release of the document? For how long will access to EAISTO be suspended and how will it be resumed? All these questions are, unfortunately, unanswered.” The head of the non-profit partnership of diagnostic stations “Safety and Transport” Yaroslav Vasichkov, supporting the idea of ​​​​the Ministry of Internal Affairs, noted that the solution would not help to reduce the accident rate on the roads: it was necessary to again make the passed technical inspection a prerequisite for admission to road traffic on a par with the registration of a car in the traffic police.

In addition to the transfer of accreditation, the government’s road map, we recall, provided for the simplification of the maintenance procedure. This has already been done: since September 1, as Kommersant said, at the technical inspection they no longer check the first-aid kit, fire extinguisher, oil leaks from the engine, do not control the operation of the windshield washer, the condition of the brake pipes and the noise level of the muffler. The Federal Antimonopoly Service, within the framework of the same roadmap, has prepared a new methodology for setting maintenance tariffs (operators have long complained about excessively low prices for this service): the document is being registered with the Ministry of Justice and should be published soon.

Ivan Buranov