Vladimir Putin: First of all I would like to thank all Chechen judges, our comrades and colleagues for the huge amount of work that you have accomplished towards restoring the judicial system in the Chechen Republic. We remember very well the difficulties you faced when creating this system from practically nothing. This was no easy task. Competent, devoted people did this and what you said just now is absolutely correct: the judicial system’s main task is to help people resolve their problems and to help them protect their rights.
And I paid attention to the information that is here. This is absolutely objective information and here are the basic figures. 34,300 criminal cases and 235,600 civil cases have been examined. Your colleagues have examined a huge number of cases. And this represents important work towards reestablishing the judicial system of the Chechen Republic and towards the development of the Russian Federation’s own legal system. And I want to draw attention to the quality of the work done by courts. We have very impressive indicators of the quality of work district courts have done in criminal cases. The judgments were sound in 97.4 percent of the cases. Of the criminal cases brought before courts of first instance, only 73 verdicts made by district courts have been cancelled or changed. This is a very good indicator. And district courts have done high-quality work in 99 percent of civil cases. Of the civil cases brought before courts of first instance, only 131 verdicts made by district courts have been cancelled or changed. But from a total number of 235,600 this is a very small amount and simply a very good indicator. I want to thank you for both the amount of cases you have examined and for the quality of work done.
Certainly, within the general programme devoted to the development of the judicial system and while restoring the Chechen Republic we will continue to pay further attention to developing the judicial system’s material base. Mr Zaurbekov, you have already drawn attention to an important aspect of this problem – providing judges with housing. We will definitely talk about this with the head of the Supreme Court and look at this issue with the government of the Russian Federation, the leadership of the Chechen Republic, with the President, and with the Prime Minister.