How to get money back for impound lot and tow truck

Motorists who are faced with the illegal towing of a vehicle can appeal the inspector’s decision and not pay a fine, costs for storing the car in an impound lot or for a tow truck.

We will determine how to properly challenge evacuation, what documents are needed for this, and how not to be late in filing an application.

The content of the article:

Is it possible to simply not pay money for a tow truck and impound lot if you consider the evacuation illegal and wrong - what will happen if you just don’t pay?

Many car owners who have been towed have a question: is it possible not to pay the accrued fines indicated on the receipt.

The answer is negative. must pay the fine and all specified expenses .

For payment, according to the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, 2 months, or 60 days, .

An administrative fine cannot be paid for, for example, 61 days. This will already be considered a delay.

Important: the deadline for payment may be suspended when the motorist files a claim in court.

After the decision of the authority is made, the period will be extended from the moment it was suspended.

If the claim is satisfied, you will not have to pay a receipt.

And if the application was not satisfied, then the period for payment will continue from the moment the court ruling/decision comes into force.

For example , the owner of a car filed a lawsuit 15 days after he was issued a fine. After considering the issue, the court did not cancel the fine. Once the decision of the authority has been made, the citizen will have another 45 days to pay the fine.

In case of unforeseen circumstances, an installment plan is provided for payment of the fine.

For example , they will accommodate you when a citizen has a large financial burden, which can be confirmed with documentation - when paying alimony, when wages are delayed, etc.

If you do not want to pay a fine and accrued fines for a tow truck and a special parking lot, then you should know that your actions will entail other penalties.

In accordance with Part 1 of Article 20.25 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation, if the fine is not paid, the motorist will:

Pay another fine , the amount of which will be twice the amount of the original fine. The size of the new fine cannot be less than 1,000 rubles.
Serve the sentence of arrest for 15 days.
Perform mandatory work for 50 hours.

The punishment will have to be determined by the court.

If the owner of the vehicle is assigned a fine, he must pay it, and also not forget about paying the original one.

Advice: it is better to pay the fine within 60 days, and then prove the illegal towing of the vehicle - and return the money through the courts.

List of documents to challenge the evacuation of a car and its location in the impound lot

The documentation package will include the following documents:

Copy of Russian passport.
A copy of your driver's license.
A protocol issued by the traffic police confirming the evacuation of the vehicle.
Vehicle registration certificate.
A copy of the receipt confirming payment of the fine.
If there are court decisions, please attach them.
Photos, videos that can prove the illegality of towing a car. They may be affected when contacting the Traffic Police Department.
Testimony of witnesses, receipts. Will come in handy in court.
Power of attorney. It must be notarized. Submitted if the legal representative of the vehicle owner applies.

The motorist must understand that evidence may influence the judge's decision.

Photos taken with a mobile phone camera.
Video recordings that will show that the car was parked in a place that is not prohibited for parking.
Screenshots of panoramas from the required location.

You can also use records from a car recorder if there were witnesses to the illegal evacuation of a vehicle.

Deadlines for applying for a refund, consideration of the application and the actual refund

Let us note what deadlines are provided by law for a motorist in case of contacting different authorities:

to the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate within 10 days from the date of evacuation of the vehicle.
To the authorities supervising parking spaces in your area or city - within 10 days. The processing time for an application is usually 5 days.
to file an application with the court . Materials can be prepared within the specified period and attached response documentation from the authorities and authorities to which the owner of the vehicle applied.
After the court decision, the funds will have to arrive in the citizen’s account within 2 weeks.
The court may consider the claim for 1-2 months.

The case will be considered faster if a lawyer defends your interests in court. In addition, it will help to correctly file a claim in court.

Or you can leave all the documentation yourself by reading our useful articles. In the section you will find ready-made forms and documents necessary to appeal against the illegal evacuation of a vehicle.

How to return money for illegal evacuation through conciliation and through court - who will reimburse the money spent?

In order to return the funds spent on paying for a special parking lot, a tow truck and a fine, a citizen must challenge the legality of the vehicle evacuation procedure.

You must follow these instructions:

Gather your documents. Read here: how to find your car, where to call and what documentation to get from the traffic police inspector.
Prepare an evidence base: photos, videos, witness statements, screenshots of panoramas.
Write a complaint to the Traffic Police Department. Support your appeal with evidence.
Receive a written response from the traffic police representatives. If the complaint was ignored, contact the Prosecutor's Office immediately. In practice, the issue is rarely resolved by the traffic police. The car towing service does not admit its mistake.
File a complaint with the Prosecutor's Office.
Get a response from the Prosecutor's Office. It should indicate to you what actions were taken to solve your problem and in what period it will be solved.
File a claim with the court. Support it with documentation and evidence. Ask in your claim to cancel the administrative punishment, fine and return the funds paid to you.
Participate in the trial. If you do not want to, then contact a lawyer or attorney.
Wait for the court's decision and receive a writ of execution.
If the decision and administrative punishment are canceled, the amount spent will be transferred to the plaintiff’s account.

The traffic police remained in debt

Not so long ago, numerous scandals with illegal towing of cars were widely known. People had their car towed, they paid for the fine, the tow truck and the impound lot, they took the car away, and then went to appeal. So the fines were returned to them without question, but the money for evacuation and storage was not. Like, the service was rendered. And the fact that the person didn’t order it didn’t bother anyone. Then the Supreme Court turned the situation around, obliging the return of all money paid by the illegally punished person.

But it seems the situation is going back. The Supreme Court again had to consider a similar case.

In July 2015, at the 79th km of the M8 Kholmogory highway, a traffic police inspector stopped a fuel tanker to check documents. He considered that the car exceeded the permissible weight. The driver demanded a control weighing, but the inspector ignored this request. But he sent the car to the impound lot. Later, the battalion commander made a decision on this case and held the company that owned the fuel tanker liable under Part 1 of Article 12.21.1. It took him a month to make a decision.

All this time, the fuel truck was bored in the impound lot. In order to quickly rescue the car, the company paid a fine of 150 thousand rubles, and also paid for storing the car in an impound lot in the amount of 279 thousand rubles. After which the company went to court to appeal the unfair decision.

The Sergiev Posad City Court decided that the excess of the permissible weight was not proven; the control weighing required by law was not carried out. On this basis, the court overturned the order issued by the traffic police.

Now all that remains is to return the wasted money. And the company tried to do this pre-trial. However, this was not the case. To return the fine, the Ministry of Finance needed a court decision. You cannot take and return money from the budget without appropriate grounds.

However, the traffic police refused to assist the company in returning the funds for the impound. Then the company appealed to the Moscow Arbitration Court demanding compensation for damage. The company estimated it at 500 thousand rubles, of which 150 thousand are a fine, 279 thousand are payment for a parking lot, 60 thousand are payment for the services of a representative in court, and more than 150 thousand are payment for the services of third-party carriers due to the forced downtime of their own car.

But the arbitration found it possible to return only the fine. He rejected everything else. These demands were also rejected by the Ninth Arbitration Court, as well as the Arbitration Court of the Moscow District. They considered that there was no evidence of violations by traffic police officers, as well as cause-and-effect relationships between the actions of traffic police officers and the losses incurred.

However, the Supreme Court did not agree with this. He recalled that in accordance with Article 16 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, a subject or municipal entity acts as a defendant in the event of a claim for compensation for losses caused as a result of illegal actions or inaction of government agencies, local governments or officials.

The inaction has been proven and confirmed by a decision of a court of general jurisdiction. Thus, the inaction of officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was illegal, and interim measures in the form of a long detention of a fuel tanker were disproportionate, the Supreme Court found. The expenses incurred by the company as a result of the long-term storage of the car in the impound lot were caused by the illegal inaction of officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. However, for some unknown reason, the lower courts did not take these arguments into account. As a result, the Supreme Court overturned their decisions and remanded the case for a new trial.

It is safe to assume that after such a decision of the Supreme Court, the Arbitration Court, taking into account all the comments, will recover funds from the treasury of the Moscow Region to compensate for the expenses of this company incurred due to the illegal actions of traffic police officers.

I wonder if the Moscow region will recover these funds from the real culprits of this situation?

There is no need to go to court now

The Moscow government has established a new procedure for returning money to citizens if it is determined that the car was moved to the impound lot illegally. Until now, funds were returned only in court; now you can contact the mayor’s office directly, which promises to return the money within eight days.

At a meeting of the Presidium of the Moscow Government on Tuesday, resolution No. 216-PP was adopted, simplifying the process of returning money for towing a car and storing it in an impound lot. We are talking about situations when the car was taken away from the area of effect of a prohibitory sign (the decision is issued by a MADI inspector) or from an area where parking is prohibited by traffic regulations (the decision is issued by a traffic police inspector).

How the FTS is preparing a methodology for calculating tariffs for car evacuation

Until now, if a driver does not agree with the actions of government officials, he could appeal against them. First, the decision to impose a fine for illegal parking (at MADI or the traffic police department) was challenged. Then the car owner went to court, which decided to return the funds for towing and storing the car. As the press service of the Moscow City Court told Kommersant, the terms of consideration “depend on the workload of the court in which the case was heard, on the circumstances of the case.” According to the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation, the consideration period should not exceed three months. After this, the driver contacted the State Public Institution “Administrator of the Moscow Parking Space” with the court decision, which returned the money within eight days.

With the release of new rules, the court is excluded from this chain. In order to return the funds, from today you need to submit to the AMPP by mail (or in person) an application containing personal data, make and state registration of the car, bank details, postal address, email address, copy of the passport, copy of the license and certificate of registration. In addition, if the decision to evacuate was made by the traffic police, a copy of this document must also be submitted to the AMPP.

Prohibition signs will be added to drivers

Within five days, the application is considered by the AMPP. The money will not be returned if it turns out that the fine was not canceled or the motorist did not provide the missing documents within 90 days. If all conditions are met, then within three days the money is returned through the Federal Treasury to the car owner’s account specified in the details when submitting the application.

According to Vice Mayor Maxim Liksutov, “this algorithm was developed by the Department of Transport on its own initiative.” “The number of erroneous decisions to evacuate vehicles is extremely low, no more than 0.1% of all decisions,” the Moscow agency quotes the official. According to MADI, in four months of 2015, 56.8 thousand cars were evacuated from the zone of prohibition signs. 722 decisions were appealed, 38 complaints were satisfied. “Nevertheless, we are doing everything possible to ensure that the process of evacuation and regulation of parking space is as transparent and understandable as possible for motorists,” said Mr. Liksutov.

“The current Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation does not say anything about the need to go to court to return money for towing,” Viktor Travin, president of the Moscow Collegium for the Legal Protection of Car Owners, explained to Kommersant. “This was an artificially invented trap to complicate the return of money. The fact that it was canceled is good news.”

Where in Moscow will night parking be allowed under prohibitory signs?

As it became known on June 9, the Traffic Management Center (TCOC) will, as an experiment, allow parking under a prohibitory sign on 14 streets in the center and northeast of the capital. Municipal deputies previously addressed this request to the mayor's office. According to the data center, in these places, under signs 3.28, information signs “Validity hours” will be installed. Parking a car on these streets will be allowed from 22:00 to 8:00. Read more

How the evacuation was seen as a violation of human rights

In April, the Presidential Council for Human Rights (HRC) supported a bill that significantly limits the rights of authorities to use tow trucks. The corresponding conclusion was sent to State Duma Chairman Sergei Naryshkin. Human rights activists believe that the current mechanism for moving cars parked under a prohibitory sign to the impound lot “grossly violates human rights.” At the same time, members of the HRC propose, even in cases where evacuation is inevitable, to take cars not to the outskirts, but to move them to a neighboring street. Read more

The resolution was canceled due to procedural violations. Can I get my money back for the parking lot?

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The resolution was canceled due to procedural violations. Can I get my money back for the parking lot?

If a similar topic was discussed, then please don’t throw your slippers. 🙂

Situation: The Presidium of the Moscow Regional Court canceled the decision of the IDPS and subsequent judicial acts on procedural violations, having established that the inspector did not explain procedural rights when drawing up the APN protocol) and terminated the proceedings under clause 6, part 1. Article 24.5 (after the expiration of the statute of limitations).

According to Part 12 of Article 27.13 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation:

12. In the event of termination of proceedings in a case of an administrative offense on the grounds provided for in paragraph 1, paragraph 2 (except for cases where an individual at the time of committing unlawful actions (inaction) did not reach the age provided for by this Code for bringing to administrative responsibility, or transfer of case materials to the prosecutor, to the preliminary investigation body or to the inquiry body in connection with the presence of signs of a crime in unlawful actions (inaction), paragraphs 3, 8, 8.1 and 9 of part 1 of Article 24.5 of this Code, the costs of moving and storing a detained vehicle are charged to the account the federal budget, and in the event of termination of proceedings in a case of an administrative offense that was being processed by an executive body of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation - to the account of the budget of the corresponding constituent entity of the Russian Federation. In the event of termination of proceedings in a case of an administrative offense for other reasons, the obligation to pay the cost of moving and storing a detained vehicle is assigned to the person who committed unlawful actions (inaction) that led to the detention of the vehicle, its parents or other legal representatives. Resolution of the issue of attributing the costs of moving and storing a detained vehicle to the account of the federal budget or the budget of a constituent entity of the Russian Federation or imposing the obligation to pay the cost of moving and storing a detained vehicle on the person who committed unlawful actions (inaction) that resulted in the detention of the vehicle, its parents or other legal representatives is reflected in the decision to terminate proceedings in the case of an administrative offense.

(as amended by Federal Laws dated June 23, 2016 N 205-FZ, dated April 17, 2017 N 68-FZ)

My opinion, based on the highlighted part of the rule of law, since the decision of the IDPS has been cancelled, then the guilt of the LVOK has not been established or proven by the protocol on the APN, and the money paid for the impound lot can be returned.
At the same time, the demand of the impound lot workers to pay for the service before issuing the vehicle, otherwise the vehicle will not be issued, is nothing more than illegal actions of the impound lot employee, falling under Article 163 of the Criminal Code, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as a rule, is against those who give them money brings, they don’t initiate a criminal case, however, this is a separate issue.

Having studied various forums and court documents, they write everywhere that there are no grounds for compensation for damage, only an application to the traffic police, which issued the decision, for the return of the fine paid when the decision entered into legal force.

However, here on the forum a different answer is given:

Can you provide links to specific court decisions on the topic of compensation for damages under clause 6, expiration of deadlines?
True, the text of the rule of law in part 12 of Article 27.13 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, which I highlighted in bold, was adopted on June 23, 2016, Federal Law 205, that is, after your court decisions and your message on the forum.

I will listen to opinions, is it possible, even if the decision of the IDPS on procedural violations is canceled, to recover damages in addition to the fine paid or, as in the topic with the quote, to understand them and forgive them? 🙂

What to do if your car is towed

1. Why can a car be towed?

All cases in which your car can be detained are described in Article 27.13 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation “Detention of a vehicle.” In Moscow, vehicles are most often towed for illegal parking. If you left your car at a pedestrian crossing, public transport stop, on tram tracks, in a tunnel, on the roadway or in other places where stopping and (or) parking is prohibited, be prepared for the fact that your car may be taken to a specialized parking lot.

even if you have issued a resident parking permit, you can park your car in your area and only in designated parking spaces;
Your car will not be towed for unpaid parking. In this case, you will only be issued a fine. But if you leave the vehicle in a disabled person’s space without having the appropriate right to do so and a special “Disabled Person” sign, regardless of whether parking has been paid for, your car may be towed;
a car with a “Disabled Person” sign can be towed if it is parked in the wrong place;
The presence or absence of a registration number on a vehicle does not in any way affect its detention. If a car without license plates is parked in the wrong place, it will still be taken to a special parking lot, but finding it in this case will be problematic.

Motorcycles may also be towed for illegal parking. The procedure for retrieving a motorcycle is the same as for a car.

2. How do you know if your car has been towed?

You can find out about car evacuation:

online by entering the license plate number of your vehicle on the mos.ru portal, on the Autocode portal or on the Moscow Transport website;
by sending a free SMS to number 7377 with the text “EV state number TS”. For example: EV A111AA199;
by calling the Moscow parking space's 24-hour hotline at: +7 (495) 539-54-54 or 3210 (for free calls from a mobile phone);
by calling the traffic police duty station by phone 02 or 112 (from a mobile phone).

You can also subscribe to notifications (then evacuation messages will be sent automatically):

in your personal account on the mos.ru portal in the “My Data” section, in the “Transport” tab, enter information about your vehicle. Next, in the “Settings” section, select “Notify if the car is towed” and specify the notification method: e-mail or SMS;
send a free SMS to number 7377 with the text “EV P license plate number of the vehicle.” For example: EV P A111AA199.

3. What should I do if my car is towed in front of me?

If your car was detained due to a violation of stopping or parking rules, but you approached it before the tow truck loaded it and started moving, you have the right to independently move it to a permitted parking space. To do this, you will need to present documents confirming your right to drive the detained vehicle. In this case, you do not have to pay for towing, only a fine for illegal parking.

If the tow truck has already started moving, loading your car, you cannot interfere with it. In this case, you will have to pay both a fine and evacuation.

4. How can I find out which special parking lot the car was taken to?

If you are convinced that your vehicle has been towed, check which special parking lot it was taken to and which traffic police/MADI department carried out the detention:

call the 24-hour hotline of the Moscow parking space by phone: +7 (495) 539-54-54 or 3210 (for free calls from a mobile phone);
indicate the license plate number of your vehicle in the Moscow Parking mobile application in the “Check evacuation” section.

Driving directions to special parking lots by public transport can be found on the Moscow Parking website.

5. What documents will be needed?

The vehicle owner will need:

passport or other identity document;
document confirming the ownership of the vehicle.

The owner's representative, who has the right to drive the vehicle, will additionally need:

driver's license;
vehicle registration certificate;
MTPL insurance policy;
waybill (for legal entities).

The owner's representative who does not have the right to drive this vehicle will additionally need:

passport or other identity document;
a document confirming the ownership of the vehicle;
power of attorney for the right to receive a detained vehicle from a specialized parking lot.

In all cases, you will also need permission to return the vehicle.

6. What to do if documents are left in the car?

Only its owner (or his representative) or a person who has the right to drive a car, that is, included in the MTPL policy, can pick up documents from a towed car.

Before going to the traffic police/MADI department that detained your car, come to the special parking lot where it was evacuated. In your presence, the seals will be removed from the car, and you will be able to pick up the necessary documents, then the car will be sealed again.

7. How to obtain permission to return a car from a special parking lot?

To pick up a towed vehicle, you will need to obtain a vehicle retrieval permit.

To do this, with the documents for the vehicle, you need to contact the traffic police/MADI department that detained it and receive a copy of the protocol on the administrative offense or a copy of the protocol on the detention of the vehicle.

In both cases, there must be a note from the official that the reasons for the detention have been eliminated. You will also be issued a fine for violating stopping or parking rules. It can be paid within 60 days.

8. How to pick up a car from a special parking lot?

To pick up a towed car, you must present documents for the vehicle and a copy of the protocol issued by the traffic police/MADI at the special parking lot. You also need to pay the cost of evacuation and, if the car was parked in a special parking lot for more than a day, the cost of storage in a special parking lot. Payment is charged for each full day that has passed from the moment the vehicle is placed in a specialized parking lot until the moment it is returned.

You will be given a receipt to pay for the towing and storage of your car at the parking lot. Those who make payment before picking up the vehicle (directly at the special parking lot) are given a 25% discount. In other cases, you will have to pay the full price within 60 days.