Fraud in the Insurance Industry: Some Qualification Problems

Abstract

The subject of the research is the component elements of the insurance fraud (Article 159.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and their compliance with the tasks of criminal-law prevention of embezzlement. Negative qualitative and quantitative transformation of this type of crime urges the judicial practice to seek optimal algorithms for the qualification of frauds associated with deceit in the occurrence date of an insured event or fraudulent change in compensation. Moreover, contradictions in the legal interpretation of the objective and subjective attributes of the crime require significant updating of special types of fraud at the legislative level. The purpose of the paper was to examine the attributes of the insurance fraud through the prism of their compliance with the legal-technical and socio-legal parameters of criminalization. To this end, Art. 159.5 of the Russian Criminal Code was analyzed along with the analysis of recommendations of the plenum and the presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation as well as domestic and foreign doctrinal approaches to counteracting fraud in both compulsory and voluntary insurance. The paper highlights the most important areas of improving criminal legislation and law enforcement practice in terms of qualifying the insurance fraud and its separation from related crimes (Parts 5–7, Article 159 and Article 165 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).