Originally from Enforcement of Money Judgments

Preview Page

I.  PRESENT ATTITUDE TOWARD ENFORCEMENT OF FOREIGN MONEY JUDGMENTS

A. Describe the receptiveness of your government (including courts) toward enforcement of foreign money judgments.

In accordance with art. 6.3 of the Federal Constitutional Law of the Russian Federation on the Judicial System of the Russian Federation, judgments of foreign courts, international courts and arbitration tribunals, are enforceable in the Russian Federation in accordance with international treaties of the Russian Federation.

Therefore, since Soviet times and in the Russian Federation today there is a principle that recognizing and enforcing a foreign money judgment in Russia requires an international treaty providing for such enforcement. Therefore, enforcement of judgments from countries with which Russia does not have a treaty is at present severely impeded.

At the same time, exceptions can be found in the practice of Russian courts where the courts have held that enforcement of foreign judgments was possible on the basis of reciprocity without an international agreement, although this practice is not uniform and the absence of an international treaty can form grounds for denying enforcement. The ability to enforce foreign judgments on the basis of reciprocity is acquiring more supporters among judges and in Russian legal doctrine, however, it has not received any backing in law.

The enforceability of a foreign money judgment in Russia is in all cases resolved by a competent Russian court on the basis of an application by the person that won the judgment. The only exception is judgments of commercial courts of the Republic of Belarus, which are directly enforceable in Russia in the same way as domestic judgments under a bilateral international treaty.