Leonid Filanovskiy told Kommersant newspaper about theliberalization of judicial practice in relation to economic crimes

The Russian presidents have taken the initiative to partially decriminalise economic crimes since 2008. Moreover, 16 federal laws have been adopted between 2009 and 2019. The Acts have established a special regime for economic crimes and offences.

However, Leonid Filanovsky, Partner and Head of  Criminal Law Practice at Maxima Legal, explained to Kommersant newspaper, that in fact now we should rather talk about liberalization in the field of economic crimes and offences. For example, the courts have stopped massively applying Articale 159 (fraud) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federatiom to business activities. Furthermore, if a citizen is not previously prosecuted, his or her actual sentence is increasingly being replaced with a suspended one. In addition, reparation for the damage caused has also begun to be taken into account. For a number of articles, repayment of debts began to be used as grounds for dropping the case. Also, courts have recently begun to apply more often in practice the mechanism of “court fines”, and law enforcement agencies have begun to initiate cases under specific economic articles, instead of hanging the general label of “fraud”.

Nevertheless, other changes are also needed, among which Leonid cited the removal of law enforcement agencies’ right to seize documents. “Copies of materials are quite sufficient for the investigation, while the lack of originals often deprives the parties of the opportunity to present evidence to the court. In addition, I would make Article 90 of the Russian Criminal Procedure Code mandatory: a court decision which has come into force should have a prejudicial effect for the investigation authorities and not be applied by them at their own discretion,” the expert added.

To read the full article (in Russian), please see Kommersant neswpaper`s website >>>