8 ORLOVSKAYA ISKRA v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT 30. If a supervisory-review judge had doubts about the lawfulness of the impugned court decisions, he or she could request the case file and then examine the case in its entirety, going beyond the grounds for review raised by the author of the supervisory-review application (§ 34 of the ruling of 24 March 2005). 31. Supervisory review was to be carried out by the president of the regional court or their deputies, and by the President of the Supreme Court of Russia or her deputies. Reviewing this provision the Constitutional Court of Russia stated that the reviewing court was to inform the person concerned by the administrative offence proceedings about the application for review lodged by the victim (decision no. 113-O of 4 April 2006 concerning the constitutional interpretation of Article 30.11 of the CAO; this decision was officially published in July 2006). The Constitutional Court also stated that until legislative amendment of the CAO concerning the scope of review, grounds for review, the reviewing courts’ powers, time-limits for seeking review and the procedure for such a review, the reviewing courts were to be guided by the relevant provisions of Chapter 36 of the Code of Commercial Procedure. 32. Article 30.11 of the CAO was deleted in December 2008. Article 30.12 provided that first-instance and appeal judgments which had become final could be challenged by way of review before regional courts and the Supreme Court of Russia. Apparently, the decision no. 113-O of 4 April 2006 was not applied by some regional courts (see decision no. 4a10-790 of 31 August 2010 by the Chelyabinsk Regional Court, and, a contrario, decision no. 4-a-854 of 24 November 2010 by the Rostov Regional Court); some regional courts stated that this decision was no longer applicable following the deletion of Article 30.11 of the CAO during the legislative reform in December 2008 (see decision no. 4a10-1227 of 28 December 2010 by the Chelyabinsk Regional Court). B. Activity of mass media outlets during election periods 1. Constitution of the Russian Federation 33. Under Article 29 of the Russian Constitution everyone has a right to freedom of expression and a right to freely seek, receive, transfer, produce or disseminate information, by any lawful means; the freedom of mass information (свобода массовой информации) is also protected. 34. Russian citizens have a right to elect and to be elected to public office and to participate in referendums (Article 32 of the Constitution). 35. Article 55 of the Constitution provides that rights and freedoms may be restricted by a federal statute only in so far as this is necessary in order to protect the foundations of the constitutional regime, morals, health, rights

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