The State Duma approved in the first reading the draft on mitigation of liability for economic articles

Deputies of the State Duma in the first reading approved the bill on raising the bar, under which the damage caused by economic violations is considered large or especially large. Document available on the official website of the State Duma.

In the explanatory note, the authors of the bill (deputies from the New People party) indicated that the “indexation” of the amount of damage or the amount of criminal activity, which allows qualifying an act on items of a large or especially large amount, has not been carried out for a long period of time.

“This led to the fact that the degree of public danger of a crime committed in the amount of 1 million rubles in 2022 significantly decreased compared to the same crime committed in 2011, and the punishment remained the same,” the authors pointed out.

It is proposed to “index” the level of the amount of damage in Art. 170.2 (introduction of deliberately false information into the boundary plan, technical plan, survey report), art. 178 (restriction of competition), Art. 180 (illegal use of means of individualization of goods), 199 (tax evasion), art. 199.1 (failure to fulfill the duties of a tax agent), art. 199.3 (avoidance of the insured individual from paying insurance premiums for compulsory social insurance) and art. 199.4 (evasion of the insured organization from paying insurance premiums) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

Previously, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation proposed to index the bar for other (but also economic) compositions. “In our opinion, the decriminalization of minor crimes in the economic sphere should be much wider,” Boris Titov, Commissioner for the Protection of Entrepreneurs’ Rights, commented on the initiative.

More about this – in the material “Kommersant” “The Ministry of Justice “devalued” economic crimes”.

Grigory Leiba