The New Criminal Code of the Russian Federation as a Legal Basis for Combating Economic Crimes

1. One indispensable component of Russia’s criminal law reform was the need to take adequate measures to protect the economy against criminal offenses in the new economic environment. What made the task difficult was that crime data of the Soviet era and the early 1990s were inadequate. It was necessary to forecast the development of the situation, as the very nature of economic crimes was bound to change. The drafters of the new Criminal Code have made that forecast, based on legislation and application practices that existed in pre-revolutionary Russia, the Soviet Union, during the New Economic Policy period, and on the experience of the world’s leading nations, including the United States.

2. The Criminal Code forecasts and accommodates new types of crimes, as related to: a) privatization in production, trading, and services sectors; b) lending and banking; c) offenses against business entities’ information security; d) conflicts between authorities and business entities.

3. It was necessary to take into account changes in organized criminal activities in the economic field (from sponging on planning-based public economy to sponging on and penetrating into private and mixed businesses; from confrontation to cooperation between gangster and white-collar organizations).

4. The Criminal Code accommodates Russia’s obligations to combat international crime, implements the principles of equal protection of property regardless of ownership, freedom of legal economic activities, fair competition, and efforts against criminalization of the economy.

5. The difficulties that have emerged in criminal-law efforts against crime during the transition period highlight the need for special regulation of company manager liability, similar to officials’ liability, but the optionality principle should be used.

6. The first steps in applying the new Criminal Code indicate the need to further the definition of an organized criminal group and community; the definition of money-laundering subjects; and to provide a description of objects and object-related aspects of tax crimes. It is necessary to re-examine the problem of legal entities’ liability and to re-institute employers’ liability for intentional delays in paying wages.

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