The Nature of the Institution of Confiscation of Property and its Application

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Legislative reform in respect of forfeiture, having returned it in 2006 in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, but in an altered status – other measures of a criminal-legal nature – after its exclusion in 2003 as a form of punishment, made a confiscation as one of the most difficult problem and controversial in the doctrine of criminal law. This is due not only to the attribution of confiscation of property to the category of other measures of a criminal-legal nature as in itself still insufficiently defined and highly controversial, but also by the inter-sectoral nature of the problem of confiscation, regulated not only by the norms of criminal, but also by criminal procedural legislation, as well as interconnected with measures of civil law – the return of property to the rightful owner, and compensation for any damage. Understanding the complexity of the legal nature of the confiscation of property lead to quite frequent changes in the Chapter 151 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (19 of federal laws on amendments), as well as cause a lot of questions of their use in practical lawyers. This is evidenced by the resolution adopted by the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of June 14, 2018 No. 17 «On some issues related to the use of confiscation of property in criminal proceedings». The target of this article is to study the confiscation of property as another measure of a criminal-legal nature by resolving theoretical and applied issues of the application of Chapter 151 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. An important role in the research process was played by work on the problems of other measures of a criminal-legal nature, confiscation of property, as well as published court practice. The methodological basis of the study were the principles of the dialectical method of cognition, as well as general scientific and private scientific methods (sociological, system-structural and formal-logical) methods. In the proposed publication, based on the analysis of special scientific literature and legal positions of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, such complex issues as the legal nature of confiscation in terms of its generic and specific characteristics, correlation with criminal punishment and criminal liability are considered, and specific recommendations are given on topical issues of application of the Chapter 151 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.