While it has been widely acknowledged that Russia’s criminal justice system has been regularly abused for the prosecution of innocent business persons by competitors and corrupt state officials, the intended corrective measures put in place are often undermined or rendered ineffectual.

This is according to Yana Yakovleva, the head of the NGO Business Solidarity and a businesswoman who once spent several months in pretrial detention based on specious charges, in a new article in a recent edition of Vedomosti.  She writes the following:

Lawmakers have decided to make the early release of prisoners more difficult. Last week, the Duma introduced an amendment which stated that parole was not possible without compensation. This amendment only applied to entrepreneurs/ businessmen.  The law titled “On a new amendment of the legislative acts of the Russian Federation to protect the rights of people affected by the crime” is as follows:

1)      The first sentence of the fifth paragraph of Article 73 was changed to: “to compensate the damage caused by the criminal actions in the amount determined by the decision of the court”;

2)      The first part of Article 74, after this “self-correction” will be changed to: “compensated the damage caused by the crime in the amount determined by a court (in full or more than half of the amount to be paid).”

It should be noted that the text of the amendment features the term “damage,” while neither the Criminal Procedure Code nor the criminal process itself have such a definition.  There are the concepts of “incurred damage” or damage “brought action against someone.”

Damage is determined by the investigator, after which it should be proven in court. The victim files a lawsuit against a particular person and the lawsuit is also indicated in the sentence. In practice, criminal cases often do not have lawsuits (the victim is missing or refuses a lawsuit), and damage (usually a custom/ ordered case). It is obvious that the use of non-legal concept of “damage” will cause many judges to face an impasse, creating conditions for corruption and arbitrary interpretation of the amended law.

(…) For example, when the CEO and the chief accountant are accused of theft, the responsibility of the director and the accountant is not shared. They both stole 100 million. However, the court sentence does not list how much each person stole. Thus, the convicted people will not be able to get parole in part because the sentence does not indicate any particular amount.

Next: how are we to understand the phrase that the convicted person should pay a “full amount or more than half of the amount.” In what cases should the prisoner be obligated to pay full or more than half of the amount? And by how much more?

Further: “The law enforcement requests the information on compensation of damage from the bailiffs and (or) from the victim.” Again, it is not clear, “and” or “or”? It seems that these “bookmarks” are specially inserted there. Of course, the court and the colony will use these discrepancies against the convict. The bailiffs work very slow and they do not have legal obligations to respond to the request of the colony within a specific timeframe. A victim does not have any responsibility. Thus, he/she can lie: sharing with the wrong information at least as revenge to the convict.

The main legal department of the president claims that enforcement came out of control: it is useless to change the laws because the system does not react to the changes. Thus, we have the vicious circle – one writes laws that contain corruption norm openly provoking the law enforcement to commit abuse, and those, who should control these law officers, say that it is useless to change the law. Maybe we should stop creating such laws to break the vicious circle?

The amendment consists of so much nonsense, the goal of which seems to be to slow down the process of convicts’ release.