Court Decisions and Migrant Sentencing

Court decisions

are now often raising a great many questions.

And just this week, everyone was absolutely shaken

by the news of

exactly how the situation ended for

the resourceful father of four,

a citizen, I believe, of both Tajikistan and Russia,

Mukhiddin Khalzada. The very man who fraudulently obtained from the

authorities a housing certificate worth five million rubles.

The case did indeed go to court. The trial took place.

In the end, he got off with, literally, a mere scare.

Why? Let's have all these issues

examined by Tsargrad columnist Yulia Banishevskaya. She's joining us now.

Yulia, greetings. Hello.

Hello, Elena.

Yes. Yulia, could you explain, first of all, why

lenient rulings are being handed down, what about Mukhiddin Khalzade?

and so on. After all, I looked at fraud involving five

million rubles—

that is a large-scale offense under criminal law,

the punishment should have been severe, but the man was simply

released in the courtroom and went to his children and his wife.

Yes, it turned out very interestingly.

Normally, he should have gotten ten years, but

the prosecution showed leniency from the start and, for some reason, asked for four years.

Well, not for some reason, I know why. He has four children.

Lena, that explains everything. Those are mitigating circumstances here.

So, the prosecution asks for four years, and the court gives a little over one

year, a year and a month. But since he had already served time in pretrial detention, they

release him right in the courtroom. And this is not the only case.

This is standard practice.

Here's how the mechanism works. I spoke to lawyers, by the way,

not just one

lawyer, and many refused to comment

because they said they had

no printable words to comment on it.

So, those who did comment laid it out very clearly.

There are three main reasons why it works this way

with migrants. They get the lightest possible sentence. First,

there are legal reasons. That is, they exercise their right

to plead

guilty, and accordingly, the maximum sentence is automatically reduced

to two-thirds, meaning they can't be given more.

In practice, this means either a suspended sentence

or a fine.

By the way, this is one of the second— yeah, the second category of reasons is

economic. As I was told,

Lawyers, most sentences are, well,

specifically fines

imposed on immigrants because, first of all, it replenishes the budget, this kind of

economy exists, and second, since they plead guilty,

there is also a saving

of the judge's working time. The case is heard under a special procedure,

quickly, judicial resources aren't spent on it, and

accordingly, this is also

a kind of saving. By the way, lawyers say that

The courts are short-staffed, wages are low, and there is a shortage not only of

judges but also of clerks. And that is another reason.

Well, there simply aren't the resources to spend long

hearing

these cases. And another, of course, crucial factor is

political reasons. There are certain forces in Russia

that you

know well about, which are interested in bringing in

foreign labor.

They don't want to damage relations with CSTO countries and AC.

There have been cases, for example, I'll remind you, in 2019,

when a group

of Tajik nationals attacked

a guy in Moscow. He stood up for a girl,

the guy was killed, and even the Tajik Foreign Ministry intervened,

it issued diplomatic notes of protest twice

during the proceedings. So you understand the level at which

these issues are resolved.

It is a very delicate matter. And I think the latter is precisely

the fundamental

block of reasons. While something can be done about legal and economic issues,

there is hardly anything that can be done about this force. Plus, there is

the fact

that the diaspora helps a great deal. Of course, as soon as

a foreign specialist gets caught up in some crime, the diaspora provides

a good lawyer. The lawyer advises them, including

advises them to take the blame and, accordingly, shave off part of the

sentence. Plus, let's not forget that migrants are generally

parents of many children, and having many children, or even

having minors as dependents, is a mitigating circumstance

that the court has no right to ignore.

In other words, all else being equal, migrants have even more advantages because they

have many children. So it ends up being more lenient than lenient.

Thank you very much.