Experts: the project of economic amnesty has insufficient criteria
Moscow, May 24 – RIA Novosti. The project of the economic amnesty, which was suggested in May by Boris Titov, the Ombudsman of entrepreneurs, is “unripe” and needs thorough analysis, says the Head of State. According to him, this is especially true in regard of the convicted for economic crimes. V.Putin pointed out: “Even among the 240 thousand (convicted for economic crimes during the last few years), even among the 13 thousand (those currently in the confinement institutions), there are many diverse categories of the convicts. I mean that there are coinage offenders, people convicted for criminal exportation of materials of double purpose that may be used for fabrication of weaponry and even weapons of mass destruction. There are also other categories of citizens, who have formally committed economic crimes, but the rate of public danger of their offences far exceeds the limits of the problem you are talking about”.
Boris Titov, business Ombudsman (author of the project): “In our document, we have indicated the maximum number of articles, regarding which the amnesty may be proclaimed. There is also the public opinion, which is divided: one third supports the amnesty, another third is against it and yet another expresses no opinion. In such situation, V.Putin said yesterday that coinage offenders should not be mentioned. And this is the problem we have: coinage offenders fall under the same article as the forgers of securities, and forgery of securities used to be employed to accuse businessmen. Criminal records are still open for some promissory note-related cases. There was chaos with securities at that time, now there is no way to tell right from wrong. You were given a promissory note, you offered it as payment and it turned out to be forged, which resulted in you being accused of the forgery. We will have to eliminate that article, because it really does coincide with the coinage offences. We will go through and decrease the number of articles which we request amnesty for, because the society is not ready for many of those questions. That’s why V.Putin charged us with that mission. We will soon call the experts’ council and fix the list of the articles (regarding which the amnesty may be held). We hope that the State Duma will pass a decision this Autumn”.
Igor Yurgens, Vice-President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE): “The interests are too disparate, the organizations are too different. Everyone spoke on what bothered him the most, and the others, like banks, spoke in a way that was too complicated for the public to understand. Such events are not held to take any decisions. Closed formats are. Such events have propaganda or lobbying purposes. This did not happen either because the texts were too complicated to be understood by common consumers, including consumers of banking services. Everything was too magnificently done to be concrete. Concerning the amnesty, the President fully understands that entrepreneurs need a positive signal, the economy is winding down, the state companies and the state sector will not reinitiate the mechanism. However, he apparently believes that the text that he was given is not sufficiently elaborated and contains wormholes. The country of consumers and law-enforcers believes that unworthy, even roguish people may avail themselves of the amnesty. They have their own variant of the truth and the businessmen do so too. The harmonization work will be continued”.
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Advocate Igor Pastukhov, Tax Adviser of the Law Firm "YUST", member of the Council on development of civil society and on human rights under the President of Russia: “The idea of the amnesty suggested by the business Ombudsman, gained large support, including that of the Council on development of civil society and on human rights under the President of Russia. The President of Russia himself states that the suggested project requires perfection. Unfortunately, the text of the project was not published for discussion, so it is difficult to say in what ways it could be perfected. Objectively, precisely the forming of objective criteria is one of the most difficult matters, if the amnesty is to encompass only the crimes connected to the exercise of entrepreneurial activity. The practice of application of the legislation on restraints by our courts shows that the law enforcers understand it in a very specific way. It is most difficult to decide how to define the attitude towards fraud convicts, how to formulate the criteria of distinction between entrepreneurship and “pseudo entrepreneurship” (for example, the creation of “pyramids”) in frauds. The President obviously does not wish that the amnesty encompass the crimes involving encroachments against public interests (exportation of double-purpose technologies and the like)”.
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