Administrative responsibility for offences related to expert activity in Ukraine

Abstract

One of the crucial means of establishing the truth in cases of administrative offences is expertise. As evidenced by judicial practice, the explanations of the individuals involved in the case are quite often contradictory, and only by appointing and conducting a forensic examination it is possible to establish certain circumstances of the case that require the use of special knowledge, which the court must evaluate accordingly. The purpose of this study was a comprehensive analysis of administrative responsibility for violating the procedure for conducting and organizing expert examinations in Ukraine. The principal methods for investigating this issue were the functional method, the logical analysis approach, and the synthesis method. The paper examined the specific features of administrative responsibility for offences related to the sphere of expert activity. It was found that the organization and conduct of expertise, as a basic category of expert activity, usually does not require the involvement of a wide range of people. However, the concept of expertise is not always limited only to forensic expertise, which is usually appointed based on a corresponding decision of a court or other authorized body. It was found that expert activity is not defined at the level of a separate legislative act, and therefore there are difficulties in forming general categories for understanding the essence of such a concept. In general, regulations define the requirements for experts, the stated expert opinions, the rights and obligations of experts, as well as responsibility for violating the procedure for conducting expert examinations. That is, the regulations mainly relate to the conduct of forensic expertise, as one of the components of expert activity. Furthermore, the current Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offences does not contain any administrative legal norms concerning administrative liability for offences that may arise in expert activity in general and forensic examinations in particular. It was concluded that the priority actions aimed at improving the institution of administrative responsibility for offences related to the field of expert activity in Ukraine should be as follows: firstly, the field of organization and conduct of non-judicial expertise requires legislative definition and statutory regulation; secondly, considering the fact that the current Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offences does not contain any administrative legal norm that concerns responsibility for offences related to the field of expert activity, namely the implementation of judicial and non-judicial examinations, it is necessary to amend the current Article 185-16 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of Administrative Offences with the following wording: “Violation of the procedure for conducting examinations by authorized individuals entails the imposition of a fine of one to two hundred minimum tax-free wages of citizens”. The materials of this paper are of practical value for subsequent research, solving issues and finding gaps in the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offences.