Compensation of Moral Damage in Property Crimes

Abstract

For a long time, the practice of criminal proceedings was based on the approach in which the moral damage in property crimes was not recognized by the bodies of preliminary investigation as a reason for civil law claims to compensate such damage as resulting from the crime. The conducted analysis of the opinions of different scholars showed that the overwhelming majority of proceduralists support the possibility of compensating moral damage in property crimes. The author pays special attention to a criminal case of fraud with intentional breach of contract in the sphere of entrepreneurship, where the bodies of preliminary investigation refuse to recognize the founder of the company that suffered property damage as the victim, and where the rights of the injured organization are represented by a bankruptcy trustee supervising the bankruptcy of the company. Using the decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation on this problem, and the decrees of the Plenary Session of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, the author concludes that the procedural interest of the founder of the organization liquidated during criminal proceedings, and acting as the injured organization in the criminal case, consist in obtaining an independent procedural status of a victim, which gives this person an opportunity to actively participate in criminal prosecution, directly protect the rights and lawful interests or the injured organization alongside the bankruptcy trustee, and bring a civil action for the compensation of moral damage caused by the crime.