SECURITY COUNCIL
CONSUMER HISTORY
POD-A-AIT CUSTOMS … ON THE SCALES
VYACHESLAV VARENOV
WATCHING LADY CAPTAIN
Recently, my friend Yuri decided to bring from abroad a new engine for his Ford. Why did he need him, you ask? There is no secret. Ford Mondeo, which he had bought last year in Germany and honestly cleared, at the Lyubertsy MOTOR-2 (interdistrict technical inspection and registration department of the Moscow Regional Road Traffic Safety Inspectorate) was categorically refused to register - the number on the engine was not factory-dialed. The examination confirmed that the dialing of the number is really not factory, but did not find any crime in this: abroad this happens all the time. The engine there is the same spare part as the gearbox or steering rod, and its number is not entered in the registration documents. If the motor needs a major overhaul, it is just handed over to a specialized workshop, from where they immediately receive exactly the same, repaired, and on it, at the request of the client, the number of the engine handed over to them is applied in a makeshift manner.
All this is absolutely legal, but - there, and not here, where the traffic police are still trying to take into account everyone and everything, including numbers on our engines. And in every deviation from the standard he sees a crime. Therefore, even despite the conclusion of the examination, which did not find any crime, on the refusal of the investigator to institute criminal proceedings on this fact, the vigilant captain from MOTOR-2, referring to some decree of our former president, was adamant: refuse to register !
The situation is just absurd: the car was brought to Russia, the customs duty for it was paid to the state in full, and now the same state, in the person of its other supervisory authority, prohibits a citizen from using the car. When asked what to do, an employee of MOTOR advised me to buy a new cylinder block with a normal (in her opinion) number.
It was possible, of course, to go to the authorities of the inter-district department with a complaint about her actions, and in case of refusal to go to court and force him to register the car. But Yuri, like most of our citizens, was not used to suing, so he preferred to buy an “engine” through friends in Lithuania and bring it with his first opportunity to the suburbs. Friends promised to help and soon acquired a Ford engine block with pistons. We issued a reference account for Yuri and set off from Vilnius in the direction of Moscow. Upon entering Belarus, they filled out a transit declaration. The first "ambush" was waiting for them on the Belarusian-Russian border.
HOW MUCH DOES THE “ENGINE” WEIGHT?
The Russian customs post on the Minsk-Moscow highway greeted them with information that the cylinder block had to be weighed to find out whether it was necessary to take a duty for the import, and if so, how much. However, customs officers cannot do this, because … there are no scales at the post. Imagine, at the most important post, through which the bulk of goods from the West enter Russia, there are no weights! In order to weigh the cargo, customs officers take it to the nearest village, to the store. What? But it was Friday night, and the general store was already closed.
“We cannot let you into Russia,” said the shift supervisor. - Wait for tomorrow morning or go to another post. Through Belarus, by itself.
It turned out that the lack of scales at the post is the problem of those who travel through it, and not the leadership of Smolensk customs. The nearest post equipped with so rare scales here was near Rudnya, on the Vitebsk-Smolensk road. But even there the customs officer on duty refused to process the import of the block. At first he decided for a long time: whether this baggage was accompanied or not, and then he somehow did not like the Lithuanian reference account. Moreover, he demanded the passport of the owner (who at that time was at home in the suburbs), despite the fact that all the passport details were in the power of attorney. In the end, he agreed to a facsimile copy of the passport. I had to go to Rudnya, call the owner of the “engine” so that he would urgently send a copy of his passport to the Rudny Post Office. But the fax did not help either: the customs simply refused to register the import of the motor.
“I don’t like your reference account,” the tax collector returned to his familiar song. “It would be better if you went to Vitebsk and made another, Belarusian, in the market,” he advised. - I just don’t know what Lithuanian should look like …
Wow! A civil servant refuses to accept an authentic document because he does not know what it should look like and advises to make a fake. Where else is this possible?
“The design of the motor will have to be postponed until Monday,” the representative of the customs service concluded.
MYTHRY AT THE PRICE OF 200 EURO
We will not dwell on how the owner of the motor was supposed to arrive at the border, how the unfortunate engine was escorted to customs in Smolensk, how they drove him and the owner's car to a temporary storage warehouse to arrange a bunch of meaningless papers, and how they made still pay. We will only say: when, after all the ordeals, the motor was brought to the customs post indicated by the Smolensk customs officers, it turned out that it … was disbanded several years ago. All this took a week.
We will omit further misadventures already at the Podolsk customs and its Donskoy motor post, where they took 200 euros of duty from the owner. We thank fate that in the MOTOR-2 car was eventually registered with a new engine. I just could not believe it.
INSTEAD OF AN AFTERWORD
But how should everything be according to the law? We turned to several customs agencies with this question, but everywhere the employees shrugged. Only the Central Customs Administration explained to us what was what.
To begin with, according to the law it was not at all necessary to immediately draw up a block in the name of the future owner. It is enough to record it on one of the accompanying Lithuanians, get a license plate card at the border, and only after that draw up a contract of sale of the engine, at least through a thrift store. Then, when transiting through Belarus, there is no need to formalize anything at Russian customs, even stop. Just come to the same Donskoy post and, presenting the Lithuanian certificate of account and the Belarusian transit declaration, arrange for the import of the unit and receive the card of the numbering unit.
