"The lawmakers were not attentive enough, when they were adopting the law"

The Constitutional Court recognized that the Penal Code’s article on frauds in the entrepreneurship sphere was not completely in line with the constitutional principle of equal protection of the law. Valery Zorkin, Chairman of the SC, named an entire list of benefits, which the law-breaching businessmen get because of it. Experts say that the Court’s decision is as logical as it is expected, while the problem is not with the PC fraud provision but rather with the application of it. Also, Zorkin himself understands that the business sometimes gets hit by “shakedowns”, and says that one “needs to avoid situations, when an entrepreneur is brought to liability under an article of the Penal Code, where the matter is actually that of civil law…”

Experts believe that such decision of the SC was to be expected. Advocate Alexey Salmin of the Law Firm "YUST" says: “Nobody has yet revoked the principle of equal protection of the law. And this decision is yet another testimony to that”.

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