confiscation measure had had no basis in domestic law. The Court considers that this complaint should be examined solely under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, which reads as follows:
"Every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions. No one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest and subject to the conditions provided for by law and by the general principles of international law.
The preceding provisions shall not, however, in any way impair the right of a State to enforce such laws as it deems necessary to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest or to secure the payment of taxes or other contributions or penalties."
A. Admissibility
19. The Court notes that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention. It further notes that it is not inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible.
B. Merits
1. Submissions by the parties
20. The applicant maintained firstly that the decision to confiscate his money had been unlawful. Pursuant to the general provisions of the Criminal Code, confiscation is a form of an auxiliary penal sanction which may only be imposed for serious or particularly serious criminal offences. The offence of smuggling was neither and moreover Article 188 of the Criminal Code did not provide for confiscation as a sanction. Furthermore, confiscation could be ordered if the defendant was given a suspended sentence, as it was in the applicant's case. The Supreme Court's judgment in the Petrenko case could not be a lawful basis because it had not been officially published and had also been issued in breach of the binding instructions of the Plenary Supreme Court (No. 19 of 16 August 1984).
21. Secondly, the applicant pointed out that the appeal court's finding that the currency had been criminally acquired did not have a factual basis. He had earned the money through the lawful exercise of his trade on Russian territory and was the lawful owner of the confiscated currency.
22. The Government denied that the applicant had been the lawful owner of the confiscated currency since he had not presented any documents showing that he had legally imported currency into Russia. In the Government's view, irrespective of whether or not the applicant had legally earned the currency in Russian territory, he was no longer the "legal holder" of that money after he had entered the customs control zone located in the Khabarovsk seaport. The Government maintained that the taking of the currency had been carried out in accordance with the domestic law.
2. The Court's assessment
(a) The applicable rule
23. Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 comprises three distinct rules: the first rule, set out in the first sentence of the first paragraph, is of a general nature and enunciates the principle of the peaceful enjoyment of property; the second rule, contained in the second sentence of the first paragraph, covers deprivation of possessions and subjects it to certain conditions; the third rule, stated in the second paragraph, recognises that the Contracting States are entitled, inter alia, to control the use of property in accordance with the general interest. The three rules are not, however, distinct in the sense of being unconnected. The second and third rules are concerned with particular instances of interference with the right to peaceful enjoyment of property and should therefore be construed in the light of the general principle enunciated in the first rule (see, as a recent authority, Broniowski v. Poland [GC], No. 31443/96, § 134, ECHR 2004-V).
24. The "possession" at issue in the present case was an amount of money in United States dollars an
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