Evasion of Customs Duties on Organizations or Natural Persons in the System of Foreign Trade Crimes: Legal and Criminalistic Analysis

Abstract

The issues of improving the effectiveness of counteracting foreign trade crimes have been relevant in the theoretical and practical sense during the whole post-Soviet period of our history and became especially urgent when the Customs Code of the Eurasian Economic Union entered into force in 2018. The authors research the patters of foreign trade crimes and examine the specific features of evading customs duties for natural or legal persons levied according to customs and tax legislations. The analysis of judicial-investigation practice on crimes under Art. 194 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation allowed the authors to conclude that these crimes are accompanied by vigorous actions aimed at covering them, and the most complex and publically dangerous type of crime is hiding the foreign trade operations themselves, which could be of serial, group or organized character and is often carried out through bogus organizations. In cases of interference from the law enforcement bodies, the suspects or the accused persons deny the intention to evade taxes, and claim that they were ignorant about how certain goods entered the territory of Russia and (or) the Eurasian Economic Union, which makes it especially relevant to reveal criminal motivation as a pertinent fact included in the subject matter according to Art. 73 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation. It prompted the authors to formulate recommendations on improving the effectiveness of investigators in determining the circumstances of the above-mentioned actions.