Representation of a company in a judicial dispute over recovery of mandatory payments to the budget
Lawyers of FBK Legal represented a company in a case upon an application of the Directorate of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resource Usage (Rosprirodnadzor) for Tomsk Region for recovery from the company of the arrears in the environmental impact fee.
In February 2018, Rosprirodnadzor lodged a claim against our client with a new calculation of air emission and water pollution charges for Q4 2014, which amounts were tens of times higher than that calculated and paid by the company. Subsequently, the client received similar claims for three more quarters of 2015.
The main argument of Rosprirodnadzor on additional air emission charges was that the company had no gas programme and no approval by the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation of the costs incurred by the company for the environment, while in terms of additional water pollution charges — that the company had to pay an increased rate in case there were no methods for calculating the underground water pollution charges.
Our lawyers developed a legal position confirming the client’s good faith and proved that it had such a programme, that it had lawfully applied the reduction factor when calculating air emission charges in connection with the measures to restore the natural environment, and that extra underground water pollution charges were ungrounded.
As a result, the court ruled in favour of the company and dismissed the claim filed by Rosprirodnadzor in full.
This dispute is a precedent-setting case: similar disputes for other periods for hundreds of millions of Russian roubles were suspended until a decision on this case. The total amount of claims is more than RUB 1 billion.
