Translated material
Scared rabbits
Economists, lawyers and deputies decided to save entrepreneurs from law enforcement officers
Law enforcement agencies seized power in the country, and entrepreneurs found themselves at risk, as a class threatened with destruction. Economists, lawyers, business representatives and State Duma deputies who gathered at a round table at the Institute of Contemporary Development came to this conclusion yesterday.Actually, the topic of the round table was: “Decriminalization of business: the need to improve criminal legislation in the economic sphere.” None of the meeting participants denied this, and even, on the contrary, everyone welcomed those innovations that have already been made or are currently being made, mainly on the initiative of President Dmitry Medvedev. These include, in particular, the sensational bill for its radical liberalization on amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure, prohibiting arrest as a preventive measure for those accused of committing crimes in the economic sphere. But this is not enough, the round table experts concluded. One-time amendments or, as they were also called, changes based on the principle of “small steps”, in their opinion, will not change anything, since the laws themselves do not work - they act through law enforcement agencies, including law enforcement agencies and the courts, and to them There are still too many complaints.
The current situation, in which entrepreneurs as a class find themselves on the brink of survival, was compared at yesterday's round table with totalitarian Soviet times. “The scale of the problem is staggering. The jokes have already been born anew: your freedom is not your merit, but our shortcoming,” said the scientific director of the Center for Legal and Economic Research, Doctor of Legal Sciences Elena Novikova, opening the meeting. - Is this a joke? And how long will we continue to remain in this situation?
Her fellow economist from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, senior researcher Mikhail Subbotin compared this situation to dispossession in Stalin’s times. “It also began gradually - at first they were strangled with taxes, and then, when people began to be indignant, the Russian farming class was cut out for generations to come.” And for the disproportionality of punishments applied to entrepreneurs for committing economic crimes, Mr. Subbotin also found an interesting analogy. “Is it possible to beat a person with a stick? No. What if it's hockey? - he said and raised the question of whether tough measures based on the principle of “tightening the screws” are really so effective: “If everything is bad, then business votes with its feet, and the country suffers economic losses.”
Those gathered also recalled Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s statement made in June last year, when he complained about the poor performance of customs authorities and large volumes of smuggling. “No landings. Several years ago I dispersed the entire customs management, and the result? - Mr. Putin said then. And then a fairly recent example of one such landing was found. He was brought by the chairman of the non-profit partnership “Business Solidarity” Yana Yakovleva, who spoke about the sentence handed down in January of this year by the Perovsky District Court of the capital to businessman Oleg Roshchin. He received 18 years of strict regime for a thousand episodes of non-payment of customs duties. And this is at a time when there is a lot of talk about removing Part 1 of Art. 188 (smuggling) from the Criminal Code and transfer it to the category of administrative offenses. “In Soviet times, they gave 15 years for premeditated murder,” recalled retired Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court Viktor Zhuikov. “And for embezzlement on an especially large scale they could be shot,” noted the chairman of the Moscow Bar Association, Henry Reznik, in response.
The excessive severity of the law, as it turned out, seriously hampers the development of the oil industry. “Even 25 years ago, we produced 75 million tons of oil from one facility, and now – 1.5 million. They are afraid to use scientific and technical innovations, because due to an accidental shortage they can be accused of theft and causing losses to the state,” said the head of the sector of the Institute of Economics and Organization of Industrial Production of the Russian Academy of Sciences Valery Kryukov. “Yes, there may be economic crimes, but the legal system must objectively follow the processes that occur in the economy.”
According to deputy and deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on State Security Mikhail Grishankov, “the situation is even worse than we can imagine.” “Where are the representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office invited to this round table? They didn't come. They didn’t come because they don’t want to participate in this discussion,” the deputy said and described the trend that he has observed over the past five years. -- Law enforcement officers carry out orders for the redistribution of power and property and for this they receive indulgences for further redistribution. And no matter what impulses the president sends, they will still go into the sand or remain on the pages of the press. When will they start asking police? Until they ask. You cited the example of the case of Oleg Roshchin, who was given 18 years for smuggling. And in the Far East, at the same time, a customs officer receives four years probation for the damage caused to the state in the amount of a billion rubles. Today we give up because of the lawlessness. But they shouldn't go down. We have to put law enforcement in its place."
The head of the department of criminal law at the Higher School of Economics, Doctor of Law, Professor Alfred Zhalinsky rightly noted that in recent years amendments to the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure have been made as often as “a bad term paper,” but this has not made business any better. “Court verdicts are unpredictable. And the power of law enforcement has shifted to law enforcement agencies. If we have conventionally 100 verdicts in economic cases, then there are 200-300 initiated criminal cases that have not been brought to trial,” said Professor Zhalinsky. - The very nature of political power has changed. It leaves the legislative bodies and even the executive bodies and is completely concentrated in the law enforcement system. But it will crumble as soon as something unpleasant happens.”
He also cited statistics according to which Russia is one of the first places in the world in terms of the number of “inmates” - about 1 million people. “President Medvedev has taken a very serious step forward. But if we stop there, then the same thing will happen again,” said former First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council Vladimir Radchenko. - Noise and wishes are one thing, but law enforcement and the number of people sitting are another. The state is focused on a punitive approach. Our task is to save people from a criminal record, otherwise we end up with a business with a tarnished reputation.”
Mr. Reznik spoke no less sharply on the issue of criminal prosecution of business: “This is a verdict on our judiciary and our law enforcement agencies. Even before the introduction of the bill on the non-use of arrest in economic cases, the Code of Criminal Procedure stated that this preventive measure is applied only if it is impossible to choose another one. And what did we get? 92% of requests for arrest were satisfied and 98% of requests for extension of detention were satisfied. For our law enforcement officers, imprisoning entrepreneurs is their own business and absolutely their own selfish interest. And the court does not create any obstacles. Everything has shifted towards law enforcement. The judiciary is made up of terrified rabbits. They are afraid to make fair decisions. And in this sense, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee can congratulate themselves on their colossal success.” According to Mr. Reznik, the introduction of a jury trial in economic cases could help, since they do not look at the law, but assess a person’s guilt by his actions and by how much it was proven by the investigation.
Retired Deputy Chairman of the Constitutional Court Tamara Morshchakova called the fact that economic crimes can be investigated by all law enforcement agencies, including the FSB, a “hidden violation of the Constitution.” “This unusually increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to destroy businesses,” Ms. Morshchakova said. “And the goals here can be different - both, in fact, departmental ones, and those formulated from above and most likely misunderstood.”
At the end of the discussion, the round table participants decided to formulate what was said more specifically, including economic justifications for the benefits of keeping entrepreneurs free rather than mass repressions in prison, and then submit their conclusions to the State Duma for consideration.