Failure to take measures to prevent and resolve conflicts of interest: labor law issues

Abstract

The subject of the study is the failure to take measures to prevent and resolve conflicts of interest. Failure to take measures is considered as an element of the objective side of disciplinary misconduct in labor relations, the composition of which is defined in paragraph 7.1. part 1 of Article 81 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, along with such elements as "conflict of interest" and "loss of trust". The types of measures are studied, the collision of their anti-corruption and labor-law nature; the subject of taking measures; the possibility of choosing a measure by an employee and an employer; the legal consequences of non-acceptance; the head as a subject of responsibility in case of non-acceptance of measures; the obligation to notify about a conflict of interests; the content of the concepts of "prevention" and "settlement". The object of the study is labor relations in terms of disciplinary responsibility for corruption offenses and related official legal relations. The author uses the general scientific method of dialectical cognition, as well as a number of private scientific methods: technical-legal, systemic-structural, formal-logical (deduction, induction, definition and division of concepts) and others. The article discusses the following problematic issues: 1) the ratio of measures provided for by anti-corruption legislation with labor law institutions, in particular, transfer to another job and suspension from work; 2) the possibility of abuse of the right by the employer and violation of the rights of the employee when taking measures; 3) the situation of legal deadlock when it is impossible to take measures; 4) unjustified inconsistency of legal regulation of measures in labor and official legal relations. The article draws conclusions about the illegality of dismissal only for failure to inform about a conflict of interest; about the priority of the employee's right to choose a measure to avoid abuse of the right by the employer; about the unification of legal regulation of suspension from work for the period of investigation of corruption misconduct or dismissal of the head for failure to take measures in labor and official relations; about ways out of the "legal impasse" if it is impossible to resolve a conflict of interest, in particular, a separate basis for termination of an employment contract due to circumstances beyond the control of the parties, or permission to act in a conflict of interest with little benefit.