Perm University Herald. Juridical Sciences. 2019. Issue 2 (44)

Yu. I. Bytko, Saratov State Law Academy

Introduction: establishment of market relations in Russia, geographical location and geopolitical interests of the country necessitate its more intensive participation in the global economic environment (with many of the countries applying corporate criminal responsibility) as well as bringing legislation, including criminal law, in line with the new realities. Today, the Russian economy needs major investment, including that from abroad. This requires development of solid legal guarantees, with criminal liability of illicit business units being one of these guarantees. Criminal activity of some legal entities contributes to merging of criminal business with the government and to spread of corruption so wide that it threatens the security of the Russian state. The stumbling block on the way to the introduction of criminal liability for legal entities is the conventional idea of inexpediency of such liability and inevitability of breaching the principle of individual and fault-based liability in case the above liability institution is introduced. Purpose: to provide critical assessment of the international practice in the application of legislation on criminal liability of legal entities as well as of the opinions describing advantages and disadvantages of this liability in the Russian legal theory; to develop the author’s concept of addressing this issue in Russia. Methods: the materialist dialectic method with the use of the analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, theoretical modeling techniques. Results: the arguments in support of the idea of liability in question, its expediency and necessity in Russia have been formulated; there has been justified a theoretical model that makes it possible to integrate the corporate criminal liability institution into the formula of individual criminal liability developed by the classical school of criminal law. Conclusions: the hopes for changes regarding the issue of corporate criminal liability in Russia should be associated with the development of small and medium businesses, as corruption and merging of criminal business with the authorities are ruinous for such types of businesses, and therefore participation of their representatives in trial juries as jurors would be rather effective in handling criminal activities of corporations.