About the development of Russian anti-corruption legislation

Last week, a legal forum of the South of Russia was held in Sochi. One of the speakers of the section was Yulia Radosteva, senior lawyer and scientific consultant at LOYS. She spoke about changes in legislation, and also presented her vision of signs of corruption crimes.

Russian criminal anti-corruption legislation is undergoing significant changes. This is due to the criminalization of public relations and the recognition of corruption as one of the systemic threats to the security of the Russian Federation, the speaker noted. The problems of corruption crime constantly attract the attention of the legislator, law enforcement, and the scientific community, and the modernization of criminal legislation is designated as one of the goals in the National anti-corruption plan.

As one example, Yulia Radosteva cited the changes made by Federal law No. 97 of may 4, 2011. For crimes under the articles on commercial bribery and receiving a bribe, new qualifying features are proposed: «knowingly illegal actions (inaction)» and «a significant amount of bribes», for which increased sanctions are provided. It was also proposed to change the structure of sanctions – a fine in a graduated amount was introduced. Restriction of liberty and arrest were removed from the sanctions.

«The conceptual aspect of the bill – the introduction of significant amounts of fines for economic crimes – seems logical, since it offers an expansion of economic sanctions as opposed to restriction or imprisonment, which, in our opinion, is proportionate to the crimes committed, and, obviously, can help reduce the number of economic crimes,» the speaker explained.

Yulia Radosteva also highlighted other problems of legislation, such as the proportionality of responsibility for mediation in bribery and receiving a bribe; inconsistency in the qualification of an act in which funds are transferred not to the official himself, but at his direction to another individual or legal entity; lack of variability in the types of punishment for corruption crimes and, as a result, the replacement of fines with imprisonment.