The specialised inter-district court for administrative offences in Astana refused to uphold the complaint filed by lawyer Sergei Utkin regarding the actions of the district police inspector Arman Baidildayev during the drawing up of a report concerning journalist Kirill Pavlov. The court found that there were no violations in the report's preparation and deemed the inspector's actions lawful.
On 13 October, the district police inspector of the Yesil district police department drew up an administrative offence report against FBK founder Kirill Pavlov under Part 4 of Article 456-2 of the Code of Administrative Offences of the Republic of Kazakhstan (CAO RK) ("Dissemination of false information").
The grounds for this were a complaint from Sunkar Eavision International LLP, which accused FBK journalists of lying following a publication about the cost of drones. The disputed information had been taken from an official document on the public procurement portal.
Lawyer Sergei Utkin from the International Fund for the Protection of Freedom of Speech "Adil Soz" appealed against the official's actions, pointing to procedural violations. The central argument of the defence was the issue of the statute of limitations for administrative liability.
According to the case materials, on 27 September, Sunkar Eavision International LLP discovered an FBK article from 6 August, which contained a hyperlink to an earlier publication from 15 July. It is the article from 15 July that contains the information the company considers false. In the report, the inspector cited the publication date as 6 August, even though this article contains only a hyperlink to the material from 15 July.
The defence insisted that the date of publication for the disputed information should be considered 15 July, not 6 August. Thus, from the publication date until the report was drawn up on 13 October, almost three months had passed, which exceeds the two-month statute of limitations established by the CAO RK and makes drawing up the report unlawful due to the expiry of the limitation period.
A police representative justified the legality of his actions by referring to paragraph 3 of Article 62 of the CAO RK concerning continuing administrative offences. According to this norm, for a continuing offence, the two-month limitation period is counted from the day the offence was discovered, not from the day it was committed.
The hearing of the complaint was delayed due to the absence of the district police inspector. The judge accepted the complaint for proceedings and scheduled the first hearing for 29 October. Baidildayev did not attend, explaining his absence by stating he was "on reinforcement duty". The inspector also failed to appear at the second hearing, this time without giving any reason. Only at the third hearing was the case examined on its merits.
The court agreed with the position of the district police inspector and concluded that the report had been drawn up correctly and that no violations had been established in its preparation. Consequently, the administrative offence report remains in force, and Pavlov's case will be forwarded for a substantive hearing in accordance with the established procedure.
For his part, Kirill Pavlov commented on the court's decision. In his opinion, procedural limitation periods lose their meaning if they can be bypassed through the concept of a "date of discovery" or by qualifying the offence as continuing.
"I think that in Kazakhstan, the procedural limitation periods for articles and publications can be abolished entirely. Because what is the point of them if this kind of factor appears, like the date of discovery or a continuing administrative offence? What then is the essence of these mutually exclusive concepts if they are interpreted in this way?" the journalist questioned.
Pavlov also noted that the court proceedings did not establish what exactly the falsity of the publication consisted of.
"Once again, I became convinced of what our justice system is really like, what the law really is, and whether there is any order at all," he concluded.
Meanwhile, the International Fund for the Protection of Freedom of Speech "Adil Soz" expresses disagreement with the court's decision. In the organisation's opinion, publishing an article is a one-off action, completed at the moment the material is posted online, and its availability on the internet does not turn this into a continuing offence.