The Ministry of Justice “depreciated” economic crimes – Newspaper Kommersant No. 141 (7342) of 08/05/2022
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The White House is developing an initiative to remove some of the criminal risks from business in order to reduce excessive pressure on it in the face of sanctions. The Ministry of Justice on Thursday presented amendments to the criminal law on the complete decriminalization of certain elements of economic crimes. In addition, taking into account inflation, the thresholds for determining the amount of damage to bring entrepreneurs to criminal liability are raised by one and a half times. Experts and business associations support the trend to reduce the risks of criminal pressure on business, but consider the initiatives of the Ministry of Justice insufficient and insist on wider decriminalization.
The Ministry of Justice published regulation.gov.ru draft amendments to the criminal law, designed to improve the business climate in the face of sanctions and reduce the risks of unjustified prosecution of entrepreneurs. The agency proposes to abolish criminal punishment for doing business without registration (Article 171 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), for registering knowingly illegal transactions with real estate (Article 170 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), for entering knowingly false information into a land survey or technical plan (Article 170.2 of the Criminal Code Russian Federation), as well as for malicious evasion of disclosure of information about securities (Article 185.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
The Ministry of Justice explains the decriminalization of these offenses by the fact that no punishment in the form of imprisonment has been established for the commission of such acts or, in fact, it has not been imposed.
Reducing the risks of criminal prosecution of businesses is part of the plan to create “greater freedom of entrepreneurial activity” promised by the president at the first meeting with business since the start of the military operation in Ukraine (see “Kommersant” dated February 25). In March, a new stage of the capital amnesty was launched and the procedure for criminal prosecution of businesses for tax violations was complicated (see “Kommersant” dated March 9). In addition, the presidential administration initiated a collection of additional initiatives to reduce the pressure of the security forces on business (see “Kommersant” dated May 19).
Some of these proposals were also included in the project of the Ministry of Justice – we are talking about increasing the amount of “significant”, “large” and “especially large” damage or income received to classify economic crimes. The RSPP proposed raising the damage thresholds for such crimes by 50% – inflation since the last amendments to the code in 2016 was almost 35%, but some experts insisted on a “dynamic” mechanism that could adapt to the situation without rigidly fixing the thresholds. As a result, the project raises the thresholds by one and a half times: for example, a particularly large amount of tax evasion by an individual will increase from 13.5 million to 20 million rubles. for three years, for companies – from 45 million to 65 million rubles, non-payment of insurance premiums – from 9 million to 13 million rubles. for individuals and from 30 million to 45 million rubles. for companies. In terms of currency violations, a particularly large amount will be deducted from the amount of uncredited or unreturned funds by more than 250 million rubles. against 150 million rubles. Thresholds will also rise for articles on fraud, circulation of goods without labeling and alcohol without a license.
The amendments of the Ministry of Justice did not cause much enthusiasm in the business and expert environment, since they only partially satisfy the request to reduce the risks of criminal prosecution.
“You can’t help but support. But it is not clear why only these articles. In our opinion, the decriminalization of minor crimes in the economic sphere should be much wider,” Boris Titov, Commissioner for Entrepreneurs’ Rights, commented on the amendments. The head of Opora Rossii, Alexander Kalinin, believes that “the trend towards decriminalization has been set, but the bill is not ambitious enough, taking into account the presidential instructions. We hope that it will be supplemented by the second reading.” Among the necessary amendments, he calls decriminalization in the field of copyright and antimonopoly legislation, indexation of the thresholds for bringing to responsibility for tax crimes (Article 198 and Article 199 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
Ekaterina Avdeeva, head of the expert center for criminal law policy and enforcement of judicial acts of Delovaya Rossiya, agrees that the measures represent a humanization of legislation, but recalls that it should proceed in a balanced way. “The procedure for dealing with criminal offenses and administrative violations has a number of serious differences. It will be necessary to pay attention to the responsibility of those persons who create unfair competition for real business,” the expert said.
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