MOSCOW, February 5 (RAPSI) – Russia’s Constitutional Court has explained that committing a foreign citizen to work not included in a contract, or different from that defined in a notification for the migration service, or to be performed at a different address cannot be qualified as an administrative offence, the court’s fresh decision reads.

The Court decision stems from a case, where an entrepreneur from the town of Cheboksary petitioned to clarify if certain provisions of the Administrative Offences Code, Labor Code, and the law on the legal status of foreign citizens in the Russian Federation answered the Constitution; the decision also takes into account earlier judicial practice.

In 2019, the entrepreneur was fined 200,000 rubles (about $3,000 at the present exchange rate) for the fact that a foreign citizen employed by her as a driver, of what the migration service was duly notified, worked also part-time as a seller at her shop without such a notification. A lower court ruled that the migration service was to be informed about each job a foreign employee was given. Later, the ruling was upheld by a higher instance.

The Constitutional Court explained that although the Labor Code prohibited requiring an employee to perform duties outside his or her labor contract, it did not preclude that an employee could be committed to do a work not in the contract on the paid basis with a written agreement on the part of such an employee. The same was true as concerned foreign citizens, the Court said, adding that the challenged legal provisions answered the Constitution as they did not oblige employers to inform regulatory authorities about any changes in labor contracts.

The applicant’s case was to be retried, according to the Constitutional Court.