Translated material
Raiders will be stopped at the entrance
Officials will be held accountable for theft of enterprises
State Duma deputies yesterday approved in the second reading the presidential bill with amendments to the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes of the Russian Federation, which will allow law enforcement agencies to attract applicants for other people's property at the stage of preparing for a raider seizure. The deputies decided to supplement the norms of the codes with the responsibility of officials for assisting raiders. Government employees now face up to ten years in prison for participating in falsifying registration documents.A draft law on strengthening the capabilities of law enforcement agencies to counter raids and on increasing responsibility for acts aimed at preparing for the seizure of someone else's property was submitted to the State Duma by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April of this year. The explanatory note to the bill states that now “it becomes possible to prosecute persons involved in raiding only at the final stage of the seizure, when the company’s property has already been stolen or otherwise unlawfully removed from the control of the owner or legal possessor.” The head of state proposed to supplement the Criminal Code (CC) of the Russian Federation with one paragraph to the already existing article and two new articles establishing responsibility for actions that usually precede the aggressive seizure of companies and other property, but for which law enforcement agencies have not yet had the opportunity to bring to justice .
In particular, Art. 170.1 “Falsification of the unified state register of legal entities or the register of securities owners.” For submitting documents with false information to the body that carries out state registration of legal entities and individual entrepreneurs, a fine of 100 thousand to 300 thousand rubles is provided. or imprisonment for a term of up to two years.
If false information was entered into the register of securities owners or into the depository accounting system through unauthorized access to registrar documents, those guilty of this face imprisonment for up to two years with a fine of up to 300 thousand rubles. For a similar crime, if it involves violence or the threat of its use, a more severe punishment is provided - imprisonment for a term of 3 to 7 years with a fine of up to 500 thousand rubles.
Addition to Art. 185.2 for officials who are obliged to monitor the correctness of transactions with securities and who are found to have entered false data into registers or to have deliberately destroyed or forged documents, liability is established in the form of a fine of up to 300 thousand rubles. or imprisonment for up to two years.
Another new article. Criminal Code of the Russian Federation 185.5 introduces liability for falsifying a decision of the general meeting of shareholders of a business company or a decision of its board of directors (supervisory board). Those guilty of this face a fine of up to 300 thousand rubles. with possible deprivation of the right to hold certain positions for a period of six months to three years (in the original version it was up to two years). There may also be criminal liability in the form of imprisonment for up to two years. If falsification of decisions of company management bodies was accompanied by coercion of a shareholder, LLC participant, member of the board of directors to vote in a certain way or refuse to vote, the fine will be from 100 thousand to 500 thousand rubles. Imprisonment for up to five years with a fine of 100 thousand to 300 thousand rubles is also provided.
During the second reading, the deputies decided to include another article in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - 285.3, establishing the responsibility of officials for entering knowingly false information into the unified state register. From now on, they will be subject to a fine of up to 80 thousand rubles. or deprivation of the right to hold certain positions for a period of up to five years. Imprisonment for a term of up to four years is also possible. The same acts committed by conspiracy by a group of persons will be punishable by fines of up to 500 thousand rubles. or imprisonment for up to six years. If they had serious consequences, the perpetrators face up to 10 years in prison.
Amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation have granted the right to conduct a preliminary investigation under new articles, and at the same time all other crimes involving securities, to the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation. Jurisdiction of Art. 285.3 remained unclear.
State Duma deputy from A Just Russia Mikhail Emelyanov urges not to overestimate the importance of this law, like any other, for effectively combating raiding. He himself supported the presidential bill, since its content “allows at the earliest stage to criminalize acts that ultimately lead to the seizure of enterprises.”
As the next step in the fight against corporate raiding, according to the deputy, the long-discussed idea of involving a notary in participation in meetings of joint-stock companies, boards of directors, in the registration procedure of participants, and certification of decisions made by them should be legalized. Now the notary does not have the right to do this, since the corresponding powers are not provided for by the legislation on notaries. The relevant departments have not yet been able to agree on conditions that could interest a notary in participating in corporate processes. “We have them on their own, and distracting them to participate in meetings will require a lot of time,” explains Mr. Emelyanov. - But we are working on it. For example, it is possible to provide for the institution of acting notaries.”
Dmitry Dmitriev, partner of the legal company “Legal Department,” sees the main significance of the amendments adopted by the deputies in the fact that they “exclude the possibility for law enforcement agencies to call crimes related to raiding civil law disputes.” At the same time, according to the lawyer, “in connection with the amendments, it becomes possible to initiate criminal cases in the interests of raiders, for example, against respectable entrepreneurs who incorrectly perform corporate procedures in a business company: they unintentionally submitted false information to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities or the minutes of the general meeting of the business company were drawn up incorrectly.”
The lawyer is skeptical about the effectiveness of the state's anti-raid campaign in recent years. In his opinion, the crisis dealt a much greater blow to this phenomenon. “It has become difficult for raiders to sell seized objects,” Dmitry Dmitriev is convinced.