Acts restricting fair competition: issues of criminalization and differentiation of criminal liability

The subject of the study is certain areas of criminal law policy in the field of protection of fair competition, namely the current state of criminalization of acts restricting fair competition, the signs of which directly or indirectly correspond to violations of the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition", disadvantages of criminalization of such acts, as well as violations of the rules of legislative technique in their design, differentiation of criminal liability for committing such crimes, law enforcement in the field of criminal law counteraction to the restriction of fair competition. The purpose of the work is to identify the problems of criminalization of acts restricting fair competition in their relation to the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition", the shortcomings of differentiation of criminal liability for their commission in the light of official recognition of the need to counter anticompetitive violations as a threat to economic security, and ways to eliminate them. The research methodology is based on general scientific and private scientific methods of cognition - system analysis, logical, comparative, formal dogmatic, legal forecasting, classification method. The novelty lies in the fact that the author: 1) a study of the provisions of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for the content of crimes in it, the signs of which are directly or indirectly related to violations of the prohibitions of the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition", an analysis of this ratio, as well as their reflection in law enforcement; 2) proposals on criminalization of collusion at auctions, depending on the subject of collusion; 3) given analysis of violations of legislative technique in the description of crimes, the signs of which may be associated with violation of the prohibitions of the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition"; 4) it is concluded that new qualifying or especially qualifying signs are included as means of differentiating criminal liability for encroachments on fair competition, the shortcomings of existing sanctions are studied and ways to eliminate them are proposed. The conclusions are that in order to solve the tasks of countering anti-competitive acts as a threat to economic security, it is necessary to reconsider the approach to criminalizing acts that restrict competition, in particular, by clarifying the signs of their objective side, expanding the grounds for criminal liability for anti-competitive agreements, differentiating responsibility for their commission by clarifying qualifying and especially qualifying signs, improving the sanctions mechanism.

competition protection, criminalization, cartel, legislative technique, restriction of competition, anti-competitive crimes, criminal liability, violations at auction, differentiation of criminal liability, anti-competition agreements