The authorized person as a subject of a criminal offense under Article 372 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine

Abstract

The article, through a systematic interpretation of the legislation, defines a list of officials who belong to “persons authorized to do so by law”, in the sense of the subject of a criminal offense provided for in Article 372 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, who have the authority to report persons of suspicion, namely, an inquirer and a detective. The topicality of this research is due, first of all, to the lack of thorough research on the subjects of the attracting a deliberately innocent person to criminal responsibility, except for the investigator and the prosecutor, since for a long time in the national criminal procedural legislation only the investigator and the prosecutor had the appropriate authority to report a person of suspicion. After the introduction in our state of the institute of inquirers, as well as detectives in the science of criminal law, not enough attention was paid to these special subjects of a criminal offense specifically under Article 372 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, so the article consistently analyzes their status and authority. Have been considered similar and distinctive features in the procedural status of the investigator and inquirer. Have been determined that the criminal procedural legislation does not provide for the right of inquirers to be served with a written report of suspicion, which causes different understanding and implementation in practice of the procedure of attracting to criminal responsibility for committing criminal misdemeanors. The status of the detective as a new phenomenon for Ukrainian realities within such bodies as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine was also researched. The set of powers of the detective has been singled out as a symbiosis of a person authorized to conduct both pre-trial investigation and operational search activities, and it also has been emphasized the possibility of attracting the detective to criminal liability under Article 372 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine when he was actually exercising the powers of an investigator. Based on the results of the research, the necessity of making changes to the provision of Article 372 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, namely the definition of the closed list of subjects of criminal offenses - “prosecutor, investigator, detective, inquirer” has been substantiated.