Timur Khutov, Head of Criminal Law Practice, BMS Law Firm, explained to SP the legal issues involved in this matter.

Russian laws do not contain such concept as a “special subject”, however, there are persons to whom special criminal proceedings are applied. Their list and the specifics of criminal prosecution are established by Article 447 of the Russian Criminal Code. It includes members of the Federation Council, deputies, judges, public prosecutors, investigators, advocates, etc.

The distinction from the regular proceedings is that they are afforded increased guarantees in terms of when a criminal case is instigated against them, if they are detained or pre-trial restrictions are selected for them. For example, a decision to detain a Constitutional Court judge as a pre-trial restriction measure may be enforced only with the consent of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation.

As for “special status persons”, they could have meant Kerimov’s diplomatic status. Nonetheless in this particular case, he travelled as a private citizen, so it is not quite clear on what grounds the French authorities were supposed to apply any special proceedings to him.