CORTE EUROPEA DEI DIRTTI DELL’UOMO, QUARTA SEZIONE, SENTENZA DEL 12.05.2015

The Court reiterates that the question of the applicability of Article 6 § 2 of the Convention is normally to be examined under two aspects: a narrow aspect relating to the conduct of the relevant criminal trial as such, and a more extensive one which can go beyond the scope of the trial under certain conditions (see, for instance, Vanjak v. Croatia, no. 29889/04, § 67, 14 January 2010).In this connection the Court observes that the forfeiture proceedings in rem in the present case did not take place after the criminal prosecution of the first applicant, but on the contrary preceded it. Consequently, the second, more extensive, aspect of Article 6 § 2 of the Convention, the role of which is to prevent the principle of presumption of innocence from being undermined after the relevant criminal proceedings have ended with an outcome other than conviction (such as acquittal, discontinuation of the criminal proceedings as being statute-barred, the death of an accused, and so on), is of no relevance in the present case (see Allen v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 25424/09, §§ 103 and 104, ECHR 2013; Geerings v. the Netherlands, no. 30810/03, §§ 43-50, 1 March 2007; Phillips, cited above, § 35; and Lagardère v. France, no. 18851/07, §§ 58-64, 12 April 2012).As to the first, more limited aspect of Article 6 § 2, the role of which is to protect an accused person’s right to be presumed innocent exclusively within the framework of the pending criminal trial itself (see Allen, cited above, § 93, with further references mentioned in the same paragraph), the Court reiterates, in the light of its well-established case law, that the forfeiture of property ordered as a result of civil proceedings in rem, without involving determination of a criminal charge, is not of a punitive but of a preventive and/or compensatory nature and thus cannot give rise to the application of the provision in question (see, amongst other authorities, Butler, cited above; AGOSI, cited above, § 65; Riela, cited above; and Arcuri, cited above).It follows that the first applicant’s complaint is incompatible ratione materiae with Article 6 § 2 of the Convention within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4.

SCARICA IL DOC. ALLEGATO : CASE OF GOGITIDZE AND OTHERS v. GEORGIA[1].doc