On further improvement of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation protecting public relations in the sphere of economic activities
Authors:   Tomsk State University, Lozinskiy Igor V. 
Published: December 2024

The article aims at analyzing the amendments in Chapter 22 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which protects public relations in the sphere of economic activities, based on the Federal Laws of the Russian Federation No. 345-FZ of July 14, 2022, No. 78-FZ of March 18, 2023, and No. 82-FZ of March 18, 2023. The author has established that the amendments made by these Laws are not sufficient to improve the Chapter, since they lead to an incomplete improvement. Their introduction has reduced the scope of application of Article 200.4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, since its disposition lost the element of “personal interest”, which could be found in the original version. On the one hand, the reduction is considered correct, since this element of the disposition in the criminal law norm under consideration may also turn out to be “superfluous.” On the other hand, the exclusion of this element from the disposition of Article 200.4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation may result in a serious legislative gap. In order to correctly resolve the issue of improving Article 200.4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the author has analyzed its disposition. The analysis has shown that the objective side of the act prohibited by the said criminal law norm turned out to be “blurred”, since the legislator gives the same interpretation to its different elements – “abuse” and “violation”, which can lead to problems in applying it in practice. The author argues that further improvement of this criminal law norm requires a precise definition of the following elements of its legislative design – “violation” and “mercenary interest.”At the same time, the introduction of these changes has reduced the maximum term of imprisonment for committing crimes prohibited by Articles 199 – 199.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, Article 199.4 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, so it became possible to refuse to initiate criminal cases under these provisions and terminate cases already initiated under them, provided that the liable party pays in full the arrears, penalties, fines, which indicates the “humanization” of criminal legislation protecting public relations in the sphere of economic activities. Also, after the introduction of these amendments, the disposition of Article 189 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation became blanket, since its practical application requires reference to the norms of legislation regulating export control. However, these changes are not enough to resolve the issue of improving Article 189 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, since it is unclear in which case it is possible to bring a liable person to justice for committing an act prohibited by it. To resolve this issue, the author proposes to amend its title and disposition by using either connecting or dividing conjunctions. Despite the introduction of the above-mentioned amendments, the issue of further improvement of the criminal legislation protecting public relations in the sphere of economic activities remains unresolved. This is evidenced by the shortcomings of the legislative structure of Articles 172.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, 174 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, 174.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, 178 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, 184 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, 195 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and 196 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. When analyzing these norms, the comparison method and the analysis method were used. The analysis has shown that despite the introduced amendments, Chapter 22 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation contains significant legislative gaps – it does not contain provisions for criminal liability for the commission of crimes that represent unfair competition by their legal nature – industrial espionage, discrediting the business reputation of an organization and misleading consumers. The study has also revealed that most of the provisions of the Chapter establish criminal liability for committing acts that, by their legal nature, are not infringements on public relations in the sphere of economic activities. Thus, to furtherly improve the criminal legislation protecting public relations in the designated sphere, the author proposes the criminalization of new acts that, by their legal nature, are forms of unfair competition. The author also considers the decriminalization of acts prohibited by the provisions of Chapter 22 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, since the economic development, along with the new forms of unfair competition, also presupposes the further “withering away” of some criminal law prohibitions that make up this Chapter. As a way for solving the indicated issue, the author also proposes to “transfer” the norms establishing liability for the commission of acts that, by their legal nature, are not an infringement on public relations in the sphere of economic activities, from Chapter 22 to other Chapters of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.