Putin will restore the general supervision over the Investigation Committee to the Prosecutor General’s Office

The State Duma has started working on the Presidential draft law, which endows the Prosecutor General’s Office with new powers. The main novelty is that the prosecutors may receive the right of general supervision over the Investigation Committee.

The draft law has been previously agreed at the Council of the State Duma this week. The Council has resolved to prepare the draft law for consideration and to include it in the approximate program of the work of the lower chamber of the Parliament.

The Presidential amendments to the Law “On the Prosecutor’s Office” endow the Prosecutor General’s Office with the general supervision over the Investigation Committee. The changes will affect clause 2 of Article 1 (The Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation), clause 1 of Article 21 (Subject of the Supervision, Prosecutor’s Supervision Chapter”) and clause 1 of Article 26 of the Law (Subject of the Supervision, the chapter “Supervision over the observance of the rights and freedoms of the person and citizen”).

Mikhail Pozdnyakov, Scientist of the Institute of Law Application Problems under the European University in Saint Petersburg, believes that the draft law restores the balance between the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigation Committee of Russia by expanding the prosecutor’s authority to supervise the investigator’s activity. Roman Terekhin, leader of the Public Duma project, agrees that the document crucially changes the entire system of checks and balances by strengthening the authority of the prosecutors.

The division of powers between the Investigation Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office was done in two stages. The amendments to the Penal Procedural Code and the Prosecutor’s Office Law of 2007 took the powers of procedural management of the investigation out of the prosecutor’s competence, but the Investigation Committee remained a division of the Prosecutor General’s Office until early 2011.

Until then, M.Pozdnyakov recalls, the prosecutor was able to determine the course of the investigation, and the situation arose after 2007, when the prosecutor’s instructions ceased to be obligatory for the investigator. When the ICR seceded in 2011, says Alexander Bolomatov, Partner of the Law Firm "YUST", the prosecutor’s office was unable to conduct autonomous investigative actions and to interfere with the investigation.