Claim against Law on 1000 AMD submitted to court
09:18, March 26, 2017 | News, Own news | Right to Property
According to the RA Law on Compensation of Damages to the Life or Health of Military Servicemen Sustained during Protection of RA in force since January 2017, an amount of 1000 AMD is deducted from RA citizens’ salaries and transferred to the RA state budget in violation of RA citizens’ property right prescribed in the RA Constitution.
1000 AMD considered stamp fee by law are charged in a mandatory way and citizens get no service for it, whereas the interpretation of the term “mandatory fee” in 2005 edition of the RA Constitution considers mandatory provision of payers with some actions of legal effect by state and local government bodies.
The RA citizens make mandatory payments for some stamps on which we have no information and get no service in return.
It follows that the Republic of Armenia got rich without any grounds in the sense of Article 1092 of the RA Civil Code by charging RA citizens a mandatory payment of 1000 AMD.
HCA Vanadzor applied to the RA Human Rights Defender to challenge the constitutionality of Article 10 prescribing the Law’s mandatory nature of stamp payment.
Referring in its response of March 13, 2017 to the RA Constitutional Court’s precedent rulings, the Ombudsman’s Office mentioned that the mandatory fee does not necessarily imply provision of any direct service to the payer. Then they added that by setting a special compensation system by law, the state ensures provision of a direct or indirect service to the payer in terms of the servicemen’s function of protecting the country’s borders: “By their indispensable service, they ensure our country’s security and inviolability of its borders by thus guaranteeing everyone’s protection.” On this unclear basis, the Ombudsman found that there were no grounds to apply to the RA Constitutional Court on constitutionality of the law.
Based on the above, on March 21, 2017, a number of HCA Vanadzor staff members applied to the General Jurisdiction Court of Kentron and Nork-Marash administrative districts of Yerevan city to compel the Republic of Armenia to return the 1000 AMD paid to the state budget as unjust enrichment amount.