There's nothing to discuss

Security forces have begun implementing legal reform

Over the past two days, not a single representative of any Russian law enforcement agency has dared to officially comment on the changes to the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) and the Law “On the Prosecutor’s Office” approved by President Vladimir Putin on June 6. Asthe Vremya Novostei newspaper has already reported, the law is about creating a virtually new independent investigative body - the Investigative Committee (IC) under the prosecutor's office and depriving the prosecutor's office of many of its current powers, which, in essence, means a revision of the entire criminal legal system in the country .

In reality, from the beginning of autumn, when the changes come into force, all the country's law enforcement agencies - the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, the State Drug Control Service and the new Investigative Committee - will become largely independent in the investigation of criminal cases and will no longer, as now, depend on the prosecutor's office.

Experts “independent” of the authorities - former high-ranking employees of these departments and lawyers - have long been actively discussing upcoming innovations. They expressed different forecasts - that the law would strengthen the fight against corruption and, on the contrary, would lead to legal chaos, but at the same time everyone agreed that serious changes would take place. However, not a single official from the current security forces dares to comment on the upcoming changes. The press services of the departments explained the silence simply by the absence of top officials who are currently on working trips around the country.

Nevertheless, unofficially, law enforcement officials actively discussed this topic and even began to prepare for the upcoming structural and organizational “shake-ups.”

Thus, a source in the Prosecutor General’s Office said that by order of Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, all prosecutor’s offices in the regions have already begun auditing and preparing for transfer to the Investigative Committee units at the prosecutor’s office of all existing criminal cases - those at the stage of preliminary investigation, terminated and closed. “By the time the law comes into force, all cases should be transferred to the new structure,” the source noted. - In addition, orders are being prepared to remove all current employees from the staff, after which they will be offered new positions, and if they do not agree, they will simply be fired. In general, such large-scale laws are not adopted so quickly - in five months. After all, they worked on the Code of Criminal Procedure for five years and only after that they approved it. Practice shows that such laws, adopted hastily, do not justify themselves. This was the case in Kazakhstan at one time. They also created the Investigative Committee according to a similar scheme, and after a year and a half they realized that the system was not justified and had to be returned.”

The Moscow prosecutor's office also reacted negatively to the reform law. Unofficially, one of the senior officials of this department noted that depriving the prosecutor's office of supervision over the preliminary investigation will lead to “legal lawlessness” on the part of the investigative authorities and, as a result, to an increase in corruption. “Last year alone in the capital, each ordinary district prosecutor identified and eliminated on average about a thousand violations in the bodies of inquiry and preliminary investigation! - the official was indignant. - Prosecutor's control, no matter how much it was criticized, was effective, it forced police officers and investigators to work within the legal framework, to understand the real responsibility for their shortcomings and mistakes. Now the prosecutor doesn’t give orders to anyone. As a result, the number of violations in the preliminary investigation will increase, and there will be no one to quickly eliminate them; in any case, it is not clear from the new decree who will do this. All transformations will most painfully affect ordinary citizens. Previously, a person knew that if something happened, he needed to complain to the prosecutor - he could at least somehow react. Now all he can do is send a letter of recommendation to the head of the investigative department, for whom the execution of this document is not at all mandatory. As a result, both prosecutors and citizens will have to go to court to resolve the problems that have arisen. The courts will be inundated with complaints. If previously in a criminal case everything was resolved within one, maximum two days, now the correspondence between the investigative department, the prosecutor and the court can drag on for more than one week. When it comes to solving a crime, about the legality of making a particular decision regarding a guilty or innocent person, this is a huge period of time.”

Investigators themselves, both from other departments and from the prosecutor’s office itself, whose powers are now significantly expanded, nevertheless had an ambivalent attitude towards the reform. “Yes, the investigator will have more powers, he will not be dominated by the prosecutor, who sometimes simply forced him to make certain decisions,” said one of the prosecutor’s investigators. “But there are also a lot of disadvantages.” Firstly, the prosecutor, as before, signs the indictment, which means that inconsistency with it on fundamental points will lead to the fact that the prosecutor will not approve it, but will return it again and again. Secondly, the new rules play into the hands of unscrupulous investigators - in the absence of control, they will be able to delay the investigation under far-fetched pretexts and act outside the legal framework. It is already clear that it will take two to three years to work out all the interaction mechanisms and write job descriptions. After which, I think, everything will be returned.”

“It became clear that the prosecutor’s office should not exist in the form in which it existed,” a source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs said in turn. - Supervision is mired in corruption, and is completely uncontrolled. The prosecutor was the king and god, who could initiate a case, or could refuse it. Isn't the huge number of scandals involving the prosecutor's office an indicator of illness within the department? All the hysterics of the prosecutor's office employees that their supervision has been taken away from them and that there will be turmoil as a result are connected with the fact that they were deprived of a tasty morsel - to earn money and not be responsible for anything. Whatever the investigator initiates, the prosecutor, as before, decides whether to sign the indictment or not. Until now, many documents were signed simply without looking, because the prosecutor was aware of the case or believed the investigator, and then the state prosecutor blushed in court or the case was returned altogether. Now the prosecutor will re-read and think 20 times before signing anything. And it’s better for prosecutors to remain silent about the quality of the investigation.”

Alexey IVLEV, Ekaterina KARACHEVA