Typical corrupt practices in the criminal prosecution of businessmen
Authors: Porosenkov G. A. 
Published: September 2022

The subject. The study is devoted to the study of corruption aspect of criminal prosecution of entrepreneurs in Russia.

The aim of this paper is to identify typical corrupt practices in the criminal prosecution of entrepreneurs, to investigate their causes, as well as to formulate recommendations for minimizing the identified practices of abuse.

The methodology. The author analyzes the cases of criminal prosecution of entrepreneurs who have filed appeals to the Center for Public Procedures "Business Against Corruption", the Center "Protection of Business". These public platforms act as filters of appeals for unwarranted criminal prosecution. In case of confirmation of the facts of illegal use of criminal law instruments in relation to an entrepreneur, the appeal with the attached expertise is sent to the Commissioner for the Protection of Entrepreneurs' Rights.

The main results, scope of application. To corrupt practices in the field of criminal prosecution of entrepreneurs the author included the following: unreasonable use of preventive measures in the form of detention in contravention of the direct prohibition of pt. 1.1 of the art. 108 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation; ignoring the fact of committing a crime in the field of business and as a consequence qualification of the crime not by special business, but by common crimes; "superficial" preliminary investigation, resulting in criminal proceedings without due cause; ignoring the prejudicial facts established by arbitration courts in criminal proceedings; unreasonable imputing the commission of an intentional act.

The reasons for the corrupt practices highlighted and investigated by the author are such factors as the wording of the law and its interpretation, limitations and imprecision of the law, allowing discretion on the part of law enforcers; the established KPIs of law enforcement agencies that encourage "the pursuit of performance" and accusatory bias; declarative ethical standards adopted by public authorities and companies, i.e. the lack of effectively implemented instruments of integrity management; low level of public control over criminal proceedings.

In order to minimize the above practices, it is necessary to further improve regulations, to stimulate ethical regulation in organizations; to modernize the metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies, focusing on non-departmental parameters; to significantly increase the role of the institution of business ombudsman as an additional guarantor of legal rights and interests of entrepreneurs, and to actively introduce digitalization tools, in particular, digital records of criminal cases.

It is important to emphasize again that the author does not claim to cover all possible corrupt practices in the prosecution of entrepreneurs and their causes. For example, there is a vicious practice of reclassifying a witness in a criminal case after testifying as a suspect and subsequently as a defendant. Further research could look in more detail at each of these corrupt practices, identify and analyze additional practices, as well as explore opportunities for their mitigation. From the point of view of the applied implementation of the results of the study, it seems that they can be useful, on the one hand, to decision makers when improving criminal policy towards entrepreneurs, but also to entrepreneurs themselves to understand the potential criminal law risks that they may face and must minimize.