Timbersmuggling: subject of criminal offense and methods of commission

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problems of investigating timber smuggling, the responsibility for which is established by Art. 201-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The relevance of the issue lies in the fact that smuggling is one of the most dangerous criminal phenomena in the sphere of social life of the country, because it causes damage not only to the financial and economic systems of the state, but also other types of criminal offenses are closely related to it, in particular, official, corruption, ecological. In fact, thousands of tons of industrial wood are exported from the country every day under the guise of ordinary - fuel wood, which causes multimillion-dollar losses to the economy of Ukraine.
 The scientific work analyzes the definition of the subject of criminal encroachment, provides a systematized description of its categories. It is determined that not all types of the criminal offense of timber smuggling are clearly defined in the legislation of Ukraine, and this, in turn, leads to different interpretations of the conceptual apparatus and creates certain corruption risks. In particular, we are talking about such a type of object of encroachment as "other timber". The article also systematizes typical methods of wood smuggling and provides their forensic characteristics. Taking into account the purpose of the crime, the specifics of the method of committing wood smuggling, and the physical characteristics of the contraband object, it is noted that wood smuggling is more typical of a method associated with hiding from customs control through the use of documents containing known false information. Such information can be entered into documents by material or intellectual forgery or by a combined method. Attention is focused on the spread of the method of illegal export of prohibited wood under the guise of firewood by intelligent forgery of documents necessary to obtain a certificate of origin of timber and lumber made from it. A variant of this method is the use of documents obtained illegally by a person, which grant the right to move wood to a person who does not have such a right, that is, such documents are obtained in violation of the established procedure.