Challenging Cryptocurrency Case Denials in the Constitutional Court
Date: 2025-04-29 Author: Gabriel Deangelo Categories: IN WORLD
Lawyer Marat Amanliev filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court challenging the provision of the law on digital currencies that prevents the protection of cryptocurrency owners in court. The reason was that his client was denied consideration of the claim due to the lack of notification to the Federal Tax Service about the ownership of digital assets.
According to the lawyer, the courts systematically reject plaintiffs in cases related to cryptocurrency, citing the lack of notification of the tax authority, although the procedure for such notification has not yet been defined at the legislative level. Amanliev believes that such a practice actually makes it impossible to exercise the right to judicial protection guaranteed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
He emphasized that in relation to any other property - from cars to real estate - the lack of notification does not deprive a citizen of the right to go to court. However, in the case of digital currency, compliance with an unspecified procedure becomes a formal barrier to justice, which violates the principle of equality before the law.
A lawyer filed a constitutional complaint on behalf of a client demanding the return of cryptocurrency from another individual. He is challenging Part 6 of Article 14 of Law No. 259-FZ, which states that courts can consider disputes related to cryptocurrency only if there is a notification to the Federal Tax Service of all transactions and wallets. However, there is no form for filing such a notification, which makes the implementation of the rule impossible in practice.
The Federal Tax Service has not yet commented on the situation, and courts of all instances have previously rejected the claim precisely because of the lack of notification. Amanliev claims that such a requirement violates the Constitutional norms concerning the right to defense, equality before the law and the inviolability of property.
Mikhail Uspensky, deputy chairman of the public council of the capital's Federal Tax Service and an expert in the field of crypto law, confirmed that such refusals have become frequent. He noted that the current regulation confuses notification of cryptocurrency ownership with filing a tax return, which leads to legal confusion. According to him, limiting judicial protection due to the lack of notification is a unique and excessively harsh approach that is not applied to any other type of property.
Uspensky also noted that the draft law on the notification mechanism has not gone beyond the first reading for many years, and the procedures themselves have not yet been spelled out. At the same time, the Federal Tax Service does not have the technical resources to implement the provisions of the law.
Lawyer Denis Polyakov recalled that this rule has been in effect since 2021, but has not yet been widely applied. He also noted that claims can be formulated differently - for example, to demand monetary compensation instead of the return of specific digital assets.
The date for the consideration of the complaint in the Constitutional Court has not yet been determined.
