LEGAL ASPECTS OF COMBATING CORRUPTION AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL

Abstract

It is substantiated that the issue of international cooperation in the field of elimination of corruption is an extremely important problem for the modern international community. Despite this, there is a lack of adequate volume of the international regulatory array to ensure the effectiveness of the universal international legal system against corruption. The authors analyze the fundamental United Nations conventions on the elimination of corruption. Thus, attention is paid to the criminalization of certain categories of socially dangerous acts as types of corruption and to outline the range of subjects of corruption. The conventions require, to varying degrees, states parties to take legislative, administrative or other effective measures at the national level to promote the elimination of corruption, and also provide for mechanisms for international cooperation in this area. In doing so, there is a distinction between the obligation of states to combat corruption in the public and private sectors. The article also highlights the main aspects of international cooperation in combating corruption at the European regional level and emphasizes their link with relevant UN regulations. In particular, the main directions of regulatory and anti-corruption regulation within the framework of the Council of Europe and the European Union are investigated. These documents require the Member States of the said organizations to criminalize certain types of acts in the public and private sectors, including bribery of officials of international organizations, bribing members of international parliamentary assemblies, bribery of judges and officials of international courts. In addition, they provide for the mandatory inclusion in national legislation of such punishment for the specified crimes as imprisonment. The documents of the EU and the Council of Europe, among other things, oblige States to cooperate among themselves in accordance with the provisions of the relevant international treaties and to take various measures to effectively eradicate corruption. The authors emphasize that pan-European criminal law in the field of combating corruption goes along the path of not unification, but the socalled “minimum harmonization”.