What experts say about amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure – Kommersant

The head of the expert center on criminal legal policy and execution of judicial acts of Business Russia, Ekaterina Avdeeva, explains that law enforcement officers ignoring the fact of committing a crime specifically in the sphere of business activities leads to the non-application of those specified in Art. 81.1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the deadlines for the return of seized property or for its inclusion in the case materials as material evidence, for the selection of a preventive measure in the form of detention, ignoring the provisions of Part 1.1 of Art. 108 Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation. She notes that the draft reveals the concept of entrepreneurial activity for the application of procedural guarantees provided for in Art. 20, 811, 108 and 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, as well as for articles of the Special Part of the Code that relate to the business sphere with a reservation.

In general, experts support the trend toward humanizing criminal legislation, but note that individual innovations will not improve the situation. Business Ombudsman Boris Titov believes that nothing will change radically until the imperative begins to prevail for economic articles, in combination with the suspect’s status as a member of the governing body of an organization or an individual entrepreneur – the bail is applied first. “It doesn’t work out with bail, we can think about more serious preventive measures. We generally lack indisputable criteria under which detention is not applied. And, perhaps, not only for economic structures, but also in general,” says Boris Titov.

NOVATOR legal Group partner Oleg Dyachkov believes that the explanation of entrepreneurial activity proposed by the Supreme Court is not enough. He notes that, according to established judicial practice, if a contract is concluded with a customer represented by a municipal or state body, its execution does not relate to entrepreneurial activity. “However, in most cases, the victim when committing an economic crime is the state or municipal body. In this regard, there is an urgent need to determine what organizational and legal form the parties to a transaction in entrepreneurial activity should have. This will put everything in its place without infringing on the rights of entrepreneurs,” says Oleg Dyachkov.

Diana Galieva