6.  The Republican Party of Russia was created in November 1990 by consolidation of the Democratic Wing of the USSR Communist Party and its subsequent secession from that party. 7.  On 14 March 1991 the Ministry of Justice formally registered the public association “Republican Party of the Russian Federation”. 8.  Following changes in domestic legislation, on 27 April 2002 a general conference of the public association decided on its reorganisation into a political party by the name of “Republican Party of Russia”. 9.  On 12 August 2002 the applicant was registered as a party by the Ministry of Justice. 10.  Its articles of association list among its aims the nomination of candidates for election to state and municipal bodies and participation in the activities of those bodies, the development of civil society in Russia and the promotion of the unity and territorial integrity of the country and of the peaceful coexistence of its multi-ethnic population. 11.  On 17 December 2005 an extraordinary general conference of the applicant elected its management bodies. In particular, Mr Zubov was elected chairman of the Political Council and Mr Sheshenin chairman of the Executive Committee. In accordance with the articles of association they became ex officio representatives of the party. The general conference also decided to change the party’s address and to create several regional branches. 12.  On 26 December 2005 the applicant asked the Ministry of Justice to amend the information contained in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. In particular, it asked that its new address and the names of its ex officio representatives be entered in the Register. 13.  On 16 January 2006 the Ministry of Justice refused to make the amendments because the party had not submitted documents showing that the general conference had been held in accordance with the law and with its articles of association. 14.  On 2 March 2006 the applicant re-submitted its request. It produced the minutes of the conferences of its regional branches at which delegates to the general conference had been nominated, the list of the delegates and the minutes of the general conference. 15.  On 4 April 2006 the Ministry of Justice refused for the second time to register the amendments. It found that the applicant had not submitted documents confirming the number of its members. Moreover, the minutes of the Irkutsk, Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk regional conferences did not include the lists of participants. The minutes of the Arkhangelsk and Yaroslavl regional conferences were flawed because they indicated that those conferences had been convened at the initiative of the Novosibirsk regional branch. The Vladimir regional conference had not actually been held. Some of the participants at the general conference were not members of the party or had not been elected delegates. Due to those and other omissions it was not possible to establish whether the regional conferences had been quorate and whether the general conference had been legitimate. 16.  The applicant challenged the refusal before a court. It argued that it was not required to submit documents confirming the number of its members. In any event, that information was already in the Ministry’s possession because the party had submitted it in its annual activity report in 2005. The Ministry of Justice was not empowered to verify whether the general conference and the regional conferences were legitimate. Domestic law required that such verification be conducted only before the registration of a new party or of amendments to the articles of association, which was not the case of the applicant. In any event, the general conference had been convened in accordance with domestic law and the articles of association. It had brought together 94 delegates from 51 regional branches. The delegates had been nominated at regional conferences held in compliance with the party’s internal rules. The law did not require the minutes of regional conferences to contain the list of participants. The minutes had indicated the total number of the members of the regional branches and the number of participants at the conferences. That information had been sufficient to establish that the conferences had been quorate. The applicant conceded that the minutes of the Arkhangelsk and Yaroslavl regional conferences contained typing errors, which, however, did not affect the outcome of the voting. The Ministry of Justice’s finding that the Vladimir regional conference had never been held had been refuted by the documents. The finding that some of the participants at the general conference had not been members of the party or had not been elected delegates was not supported by any documentary evidence. The applicant lastly submitted that officials of the regional departments of the Ministry of Justice who had attended some of the regional conferences had not noted any breaches of the substantive or procedural rules. The applicant claimed that the refusal to amend the Register violated its freedom of association and hindered its activities. In particular, the Ministry of Justice had refused to register three regional branches precisely because the Register did not contain the names of the applicant’s ex officio representatives. 17.  The Ministry of Justice maintained that the decision of 4 April 2006 had been lawful. The Ministry was not only entitled, but had a legal obligation to verify the information submitted by the applicant. The verification had revealed that the documents produced by the applicant had not met the legal requirements. In particular, the minutes of the regional conferences did not all contain the list of participants. Thirty-three regional conferences had been inquorate. The applicant had never submitted any information about its local branches and it was therefore not clear who had nominated delegates for the regional conferences and whose interests they had represented. The minutes of the Arkhangelsk and Yaroslavl regional conferences indicated that the conferences had been convened at the initiative of the Novosibirsk regional branch. Due to those omissions it had not been possible to establish whether the delegates to the general conference had been duly nominated. Moreover, the decision to convene the general conference had been taken on 1 December 2005, while some of the regional conferences had taken place in November 2005. As the general conference had been convened in breach of the procedural rules, it had been illegitimate. 18.  On 12 September 2006 the Taganskiy District Court of Moscow upheld the decision of 4 April 2006. It held that, under sections 15, 16, 20 and 38 of the Political Parties Act, the Ministry of Justice had been empowered to verify the information and documents submitted by the applicant before registering any amendments to the Register. The Ministry had found that the documents submitted did not meet the requirements established by law. The court had no reason to doubt its findings because they were corroborated by the case materials and had not been refuted by the applicant. The court held that the decision of 4 April 2006 had been lawful and had not violated the applicant’s rights under Article 11 of the Convention. 19.  In its appeal submissions the applicant claimed, in particular, that the Ministry of Justice’s requirement to submit the same documents as for the initial registration of a party or the registration of amendments to its articles of association had no basis in domestic law. Under the Political Parties Act amendments concerning a party’s address or the names of its ex officio representatives were to be registered on the basis of a written notification to the registration authority. The applicant also argued that the Ministry of Justice had no authority to verify the legitimacy of its general conference. It insisted that the general conference had been held in conformity with its articles of association and with domestic law. 20.  On 19 December 2006 the Moscow City Court upheld the judgment on appeal. It referred to section 32 § 7 of the Non-Profit Organisations Act and held as follows:
“...A political party requesting to amend the information [contained in the Register] is to produce the same documents as required for registration of a party. The list of those documents is contained in section 16 of the Political Parties Act.
[The applicant’s] argument that the extraordinary general conference of the party was organised and held in accordance with the law in force and with its articles of association aims at a different assessment of documents produced [by the applicant] to [the Ministry of Justice] for registration. At the same time, [the Ministry of Justice] and the [District] Court had reasons to conclude that the submitted documents contained information which did not meet the legal requirements. The [City] Court agrees with the [District] Court’s assessment of the evidence.” 21.  In 2006, in a separate set of proceedings, the Ministry of Justice conducted an inspection of the applicant’s activities. It issued thirty-six warnings to the party’s regional branches. Seven regional branches were dissolved by courts at the Ministry’s request and the activities of the Moscow regional branch were suspended. On 28 September 2006 the Ministry prepared the inspection report mentioning that the applicant had 49 regional branches, of which 32 had more than 500 members, and that the total number of party members was 39,970. 22.  On 1 March 2007 the Ministry of Justice asked the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation to dissolve the applicant. It claimed that the party had fewer than 50,000 members and fewer than 45 regional branches with more than 500 members, in breach of the Political Parties Act. 23.  The applicant submitted that it met the requirements of the Political Parties Act because it had 58,166 members and had 44 registered regional branches with more than 500 members. 24.  On 23 March 2007 the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation ordered the dissolution of the applicant. It found that the Mari-El, Krasnoyarsk, Tyumen, Novosibirsk, Murmansk, and Vladimir regional branches had been dissolved by court decisions in 2006, therefore their members could not be taken into account. Eight regional branches had fewer than 500 members, in particular:
– despite a warning issued by the Ministry, the Ingushetia regional branch did not submit documents showing the number of its members. According to the information in the Ministry of Justice’s possession, the branch had 152 members;
– the applicant had submitted that the Kalmykiya regional branch had 508 members. However, an inspection had revealed that thirty-seven of them had never joined the party, four of them were simultaneously members of other regional branches, the names of three members appeared twice in the list, and eighteen members did not reside at the indicated addresses. Therefore, the branch had in fact only 468 members;
– out of 516 members of the Krasnodar Regional branch eighteen had made a written declaration that they had never joined the party. Four members, while refusing to make a written statement, had made oral statements to that effect;
– the Arkhangelsk regional branch had 514 members. However, seventeen of them were under eighteen years of age. Moreover, the party had not produced individual applications for membership in respect of 100 members;
– 1,036 members of the Samara regional branch had been admitted to the party in breach of the articles of association. In particular, 791 members had been admitted by the branch’s political council elected at an illegitimate general conference. To support its conclusion that the general conference had been illegitimate the Supreme Court referred to the judgment of the Taganskiy District Court of Moscow of 12 September 2006 (see paragraph 18 above);
– the Tambov regional branch had 541 members. However, the membership of 230 of them had not been confirmed. In particular, the party had not produced individual applications for membership in respect of 177 members, thirty-three members had no residence registration in the Tambov Region, four members had left the Tambov region, two members had been younger than eighteen at the time they had joined the party, three members had not signed their applications for membership, and thirty-three had declared that they had never joined the party;
– the Tula Regional branch had 383 members;
– the Komi-Permyatskiy regional branch had 154 members. 25.  The court held that it had no reason to doubt the information submitted by the Ministry. The applicant had never contested before the courts the information contained in the inspection report or the warnings issued by the Ministry. The court further found that the Ministry had not submitted any evidence in support of their conclusions that the Karachaevo-Cherkesskiy, Altay and St Petersburg regional branches had fewer than 500 members, therefore the court accepted the number of members suggested by the applicant. The court also accepted that the party had several unregistered branches. However, their members could not be taken into account for establishing the total number of party members. The court concluded that on 1 January 2006 the applicant had 43,942 members, and 37 regional branches with more than 500 members. Thus, the applicant did not meet the requirements established by law and was subject to dissolution. 26.  The applicant appealed. It submitted that the Ministry’s submissions had not been supported by any documents. Nor had the Ministry indicated the names of the people who, in its opinion, had been admitted to the party in breach of domestic law and the party’s articles of association. The first-instance court had refused to admit evidence submitted by the applicant, namely individual applications for membership and other documents confirming the number of party members. The court had not taken into account 8,819 members living in the regions where the branches were not registered, although they had been admitted to the party at the federal level and were members of the party itself and not members of its unregistered regional branches. The Ministry had conducted an inspection in March 2006; it had never verified the number of the applicant’s members as at 1 January 2006. Moreover, its seven regional branches had been dissolved later in 2006, therefore on 1 January 2006 they had still been functioning and the applicant had had the required number of regional branches. Lastly, as domestic law did not establish the inspection procedure, the inspections had been arbitrary. 27.  On 31 May 2007 the Appellate Collegium of the Supreme Court upheld the judgment of 23 March 2007 on appeal. It found that the findings of the first-instance court had been based on sufficient evidence, namely the inspection reports compiled by the Ministry of Justice and its regional departments. The court had taken into account the number of the party’s members as at 1 January 2006. Individual applications submitted by the party after that date could not be taken into account because they could have been written after 1 January 2006 and backdated. Moreover, the applicant had not challenged the inspection report or the warnings issued by the Ministry. It was accordingly barred from contesting before the Supreme Court the facts mentioned in the report and in the warnings. In any event, even according to the party’s submissions it had only 44 regional branches with more than 500 members instead of 45, which was in itself a sufficient ground for dissolution.