Legislative initiatives to strengthen the accountability for corruption crimes during the war period in Ukraine

Abstract

The article provides a critical analysis of the Draft Law of Ukraine "On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts on Equating the Punishment of Corrupt Criminal Offenses to High Treason During Martial Law in Ukraine" (Reg. No. 9659 dated 08/30/2023). It was revealed that the proposed draft law article 111-3 "Commitment of a corruption criminal offense during the operation of the legal regime of martial law" was created by mechanically combining the relevant features of criminal offenses provided for in Art. 191 "Appropriation, embezzlement of property or taking possession of it by abuse of official position" (Chapter VI of the Special Part of the Criminal Code) - Part 1 of Art. 111-3 of the project, Art. 210 "Untargeted use of budget funds, implementation of budget expenditures or provision of loans from the budget without established budget allocations or exceeding them" (Chapter VII of the Special Part of the Criminal Code) - Part 2 of Article 111-3 of the project, Art. 364 "Abuse of power or official position" (Chapter XVII of the Special Part of the Criminal Code) - Part 3 of Art. 111-3 of the project, Art. 368 "Acceptance of an offer, promise or receipt of undue benefit by an official" (Chapter XVII of the Special Part of the Criminal Code) - Part 4 of Art. 111-3 of the project, Art. 368-5 "Illegal enrichment" (Chapter XVII of the Special Part of the Criminal Code) - part 5 of Art. 111-3 of the project and Art. 369-2 "Abuse of influence" (Chapter XVII of the Special Part of the Criminal Code) - Part 6 of Art. 111-3 of the project. Such a concentration of different types of criminal offenses in one article is unfounded, because it violates the principle that is embedded in the construction of the entire Special Part of the Criminal Code. The decision of the draft law, according to which all six parts of this article provide for the same sanctions - "is punishable by deprivation of liberty for a term of fifteen years or life imprisonment, with confiscation of property" is also questionable. Mechanistic formation of Art. 111-3 of the project destroys the specificity of the public danger of the acts combined in this article. The task of increasing the severity of punishments for corruption criminal offenses is proposed to be implemented in a simpler way - by supplementing the relevant articles of the Criminal Code with a new qualifying feature "committed during the operation of the legal regime of martial law by a person occupying a responsible and especially responsible position" with the establishment of sanctions of the higher level of severity. However, these sanctions should not be identical, as implemented in the draft law, but should take into account the nature of each individual criminal offense.