CASE OF KURILOVICH AND OTHERS v. BULGARIA
Violation of Article 8 - Right to respect for private and family life (Article 8-1 - Respect for family life);Violation of Article 13+8 - Right to an effective remedy (Article 13 - Effective remedy) (Article 8 - Right to respect for private and family life;Article 8-1 - Respect for family life)
Nona Tsotsoria;Síofra O’Leary
4. The applicants were born in 1978, 1980 and 2007 respectively. 5. The first applicant came to Bulgaria in 1997. In 2001 he was granted long-term resident status, and in 2003 – permanent resident status. In 2005 he married the second applicant, and in 2007 the third applicant, their son, was born. 6. On 29 May 2008 the head of the National Security Service issued an order withdrawing the first applicant’s residence permit, ordering his expulsion and imposing a ten-year ban on his reentering Bulgaria on the ground that his presence in the country represented a “serious threat to national security”. Factual grounds justifying the order were not indicated; it was merely noted that it was based on “proposal no. B848”. 7. That proposal, drawn up by the National Security Service on 27 May 2008 and initially classified, was declassified in 2016 and has been submitted by the Government. It stated that the first applicant was a member of a “Russian criminal group” implicated in money laundering, extortion, smuggling, illegal arms deals and the financing of “terrorist groups” on the territory of the Russian Federation. It said further that the first applicant had lowered Bulgaria’s international reputation, by “implicating the country in the financing of terrorist organisations, transnational criminality, corruption and drug trafficking”. No evidence was provided to substantiate those claims. 8. On 12 June 2008 the first applicant applied for judicial review of the order of 29 May 2008. He denied the allegations against him and stated that his family resided in Bulgaria and that the measures against him breached his Convention rights. In addition, he presented a certificate that he had no criminal convictions in Bulgaria. 9. In a final judgment of 8 January 2009 the Supreme Administrative Court dismissed the application for judicial review and held that the 29 May 2008 order was lawful. After summarising the allegations made in proposal no. B848, it held merely that they were sufficient to justify a conclusion that the first applicant represented a threat to national security. Furthermore, it dismissed his arguments relating to his family life, considering that “any restriction of the rights under the Convention is justified [when based] on national security considerations, in cases where foreign citizens’ behaviour threatens the national security and the public order of the State where they reside.” 10. The first applicant was expelled on 24 April 2009. It is unclear whether the second and third applicants remained in Bulgaria after that. In 2012 the first and second applicants had another child.