Is it possible to register a car if there are unpaid fines?

Car fines – what does the law say?

The first thing that is important to note in our question is that there cannot be fines on a car. Any penalties are applied to the person - the driver or owner of this car. It’s just that in the traffic police database such sanctions are designated within the framework of violations committed on a specific vehicle. But these sanctions do not belong to the car, but to the driver or owner.

There can be no fines on the car.

However, if there are debts from the previous owner of the used car you bought secondhand, you may encounter problems.

What should I do if, when registering or deregistering, they still require me to pay fines?

If the traffic police officer nevertheless makes the registration of the car conditional on the payment of all fines, then remind him of the above instructions of the Road Traffic Safety Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and also require a written refusal to register or deregister with the motivation and grounds for the refusal. When submitting a written application, the inspector is required to give a written refusal.

If he refuses to give a written refusal, then the verbal refusal should be videotaped in order to have evidence of the refusal. He has no right to prohibit him from being filmed.

Then, with the evidence base, you can contact a higher official - the head of the MREO department of the traffic police or directly to the prosecutor's office.

What are the penalties for the previous owner?

There are two main risks associated with seller debt:

prohibition of car registration,
seizure of the vehicle.

To begin with, we offer you a quick answer depending on your situation with an online test.

I bought a car, it has fines from the previous owner - what should I do?

1. Have you already re-registered the car in your name with the traffic police?

Not really

2. Check on the website of the traffic police or bailiffs to see if there is a registration ban?

There is a ban There is no ban

3. Look at the date of the ban - was it imposed before the purchase of the car (the date in the sales contract) or after?

Before after

You don't have to worry! There is no need to pay the fines of the previous owner - these are the debts of the previous owner, and not yours and not the cars. Go through again

You need to re-register the vehicle as soon as possible to the new owner - you, before the bailiffs impose a ban due to the previous owner. Go through again

Unfortunately, this is the worst case scenario. Such a ban can be lifted only if the previous owner of the car or you pay all the fines on the car. Also, such a ban may result in the seizure of the vehicle. Go through again

You need to contact the bailiff who imposed the ban with an application to lift it on the basis that on the date of imposition the car had already left the property of the previous owner. Read more... Go through again

Prohibition of registration actions

According to Chapter 7 of the Federal Law “On Enforcement Proceedings”, the bailiff has the right to take certain enforcement measures . In particular, prohibit registration actions with the debtor’s transport. How does this happen:

The bailiff issues the relevant act and notifies: the debtor, the competent authorities - the traffic police.
Information is entered into the appropriate database that registration actions cannot be performed with the car. These are: deregistration, registration with another person.

Registration ban actions are often confused with seizure of property. What is the difference?

If the car is seized, it can be sold at auction to pay off the debt using the proceeds. If there is a ban, then the owner can safely use the car, but it is pointless to contact the traffic police regarding any registration actions - they will refuse.

Thus, even if the debtor enters into a car purchase and sale agreement with someone, the new owner will not be able to register the vehicle in his own name.

Practice shows that further events develop according to one of the following scenarios :

The buyer begins to insist on terminating the contract.
The parties are looking for options in which the registration ban can be lifted.

It turns out: if a traffic police officer refuses to register a car, citing the fact that the vehicle is subject to fines, and, most importantly, there is a ban on performing registration actions, then such a refusal is considered absolutely lawful.

Read more about the ban on vehicle registration and how to find out about restrictions in advance here.

Will they be registered and what are the consequences?

Arrest and ban are real risks that can seriously complicate your car life - up to the impossibility of operation and even the risk of losing the car with the cloudy prospect of extracting the money paid for it from the debtor seller.

Therefore, when buying a car, it is important to do important things:

check the car for registration restrictions by VIN code on the traffic police website or the bailiffs website,
check for fines from the previous owner using the registration certificate on the official website of the traffic police,
As soon as possible after concluding the purchase and sale agreement, register the car in your name.

If at the moment you are in a situation between the first and second points (you checked the car for fines, found them, but have not yet registered the car in your name), then we recommend changing the owner as soon as possible. But before that, you need to check if the registration ban is already on the car - according to the first point, then we move on to the next one.

What to do if you bought a car and there are fines on it - infographics

If there is a ban?

So, you bought a car, and it turned out to have unpaid fines from the previous owner of the car, in addition, a registration ban was imposed on the vehicle as a result of an inspection.

A registration ban is a restriction of registration actions in the traffic police. Such actions include changing the owner of the vehicle. We discussed the registration ban in more detail in our special article; we also have complete instructions for registering a car.

In our situation, there are two options for imposing restrictions on which further actions depend:

the ban was imposed after the conclusion of the purchase and sale agreement due to fines of the previous owner of the car - then it was imposed illegally, and we move on to reading the instructional article on removing such restrictions,
the restrictions were imposed a long time ago, and you bought a car with a registration ban.

The last case is the worst. Here, in fact, there are only 2 ways out of the situation for you:

convince the seller to pay fines on the car,
You must pay these fines yourself.

Oh yes, there is a third option - ride without registration. In this case, you will need to either constantly renew the purchase and sale agreement, or drive as is - in an unregistered car. There are sanctions for this: for the first time a fine of 800 rubles, in subsequent cases - up to deprivation of rights. But according to the law, it is not your fault that the prohibition exists; you are a bona fide party to the car purchase and sale transaction. The bad news is that the traffic police inspector on the road will most likely still issue a fine or a protocol for deprivation, and you will have to defend your position further.

But there is another risk of the latest scheme...

Calculate the cost of your MTPL policy

Arrest

Sooner or later, if the fines are not paid for a long time, and the bailiffs have initiated enforcement proceedings on them, the ban may turn into the seizure of the car. In practice it works like this:

You are driving on the road in a car with unpaid fines from the previous owner, which has been subject to arrest,
as part of one of the raids of the bailiffs together with the traffic police, an inspector stops you, and the bailiff sitting next to him in his car checks the license plates of the car for debts, finds an arrest warrant,
as a result, the car can be taken away legally on the road,
All you have to do is terminate the sales contract and claim back the money paid for the car.

There is one common myth that supposedly only the bailiff who is handling the case can take away a purchased car when it has fines as part of an arrest. But that's not true. The only good news here is that for 2021, the bailiff databases do not overlap between regions. Therefore, if you were stopped in another region, the bailiffs may not see the existence of a ban and arrest.

Something else useful for you:

Bailiffs have banned the registration of a car due to the previous owner - how to remove it?
All about the ban on registration actions in questions and answers
How to check a car for seizures?

Documents required for selling a car

A legally competent purchase and sale transaction of any vehicle requires the submission of a number of documents, information about which is largely reflected in the text of the contract. Transfer of the car, including if it is intended to sell the car with fines, is impossible without a number of identification documents.

The seller must have with him:

original passport;
registration certificate;
vehicle passport;
Insurance policy and diagnostic card, if the owner has one.

On the buyer’s part, it is enough to present a passport for identification and enter personal data into the sales contract in the “Parties” section and the preamble.

Registration with fines

Is it possible to register a car if there are unpaid fines?
Not a single law, nor the Code of Administrative Offenses, requires a citizen to pay debts under sanctions. Based on this, it is concluded that the inspectors’ demands are illegal. Previously, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation received a large number of complaints about the actions of law enforcement officers who refused to register a car if it had outstanding debts. Because of this, appropriate amendments to the current legislation were adopted, which prohibited department employees from committing unlawful actions and refusing citizens to register cars. All that is required to register a car is a list of documents, as well as the presence of the car itself; the current legislation does not provide otherwise.

If a similar situation arises, you should immediately write a complaint to higher management, after which the inspector who took the initiative will be held accountable. The current version of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation contains Article No. 20.25 “Evasion from execution of administrative punishment”, on the basis of which a new fine is applied to the outstanding debt, as well as payment of the previous one in double amount. Only the court has the right to hold people accountable under this provision, and not the traffic police inspector, who does not have such powers.

Does the law require fines to be paid before registering a car?

To register a car, you must pay the appropriate state fee, submit the car for inspection and provide the following documents:

passport of the new owner;
PTS;
OSAGO;
DCT (or a document confirming receipt of a car as a gift or inheritance);
receipt of payment of duty.

That's all the law requires. There is no clause stating that in order to register a car, its owner must pay off all fines. And according to the principle of dispositivity of law: what is not prohibited is permitted.

However, in practice, it often happened that inspectors still refused to register if there were unpaid fines. Sometimes, because of this, the 10-day registration period expired, and drivers received fines. In this regard, the traffic police issued Directive No. 13/5-77. This regulatory document directly prohibits requiring drivers to pay fines for registration and other processes. And for violating this prohibition, inspectors must be subject to disciplinary measures.

Checking unpaid sanctions

Everything is clear with the procedure for registering a vehicle, since there is nothing complicated here, but the question arises: can they refuse to register a car due to unpaid fines?
In practice, this happens quite often. However, it should be immediately clarified that law enforcement agency inspectors do not have the right to refuse registration actions if there are outstanding sanctions, especially if they were left unpaid by the seller or former owner. In this case, you need to consider how the debt check is performed:

upon submission of documentation, the necessary registration actions with the car begin;
in the process, after the driver passes the diagnostic platform and receives a mark on the card, a check is performed for the presence of sanctions;
a more thorough check of the vehicle owner, as well as the car itself, is carried out subsequently;
when making a corresponding entry in the STS, as well as issuing a new passport for the car, the presence or absence of fines is revealed;
subsequently, when the car owner must receive documents, he is given a waiver and given receipts to pay the sanctions.

Such actions by law enforcement officers are unlawful; this is the answer to the question of whether it is possible to re-register a car with fines from the old owner.

The new owner of the car, in accordance with the provisions of this legislation, is not obliged to pay the sanctions imposed on the car before acquiring it. In other words, if there are outstanding debts, they are collected in a different manner.

At the same time, inspectors cannot interfere with registration actions, provided that, with the exception of sanctions, there are no more violations.

But if you still want to find out for sure whether there are fines and other restrictions on the car, use our service at the link