Although the government’s effort to modernize criminal justice legislation deserves praise, there is plenty of caution that needs to be taken when making radical changes.
The ongoing efforts to decriminalize illegal economic activity may cause more problems than it potentially solves.
Lawyers and prosecutors fear that the law takes away some of the few restrictions that corrupt officials have had so far. Once these deterrents are removed, the fear is that they will cheat and steal fearlessly, knowing that jail is not a threat for abuse of office and other corrupt practices.
And as far as fines go, they’re nothing to fear if you have been in office long enough and stacked up the cash high enough.
But fines are a different story for businesses. The new draft law introduces some draconian measures against businesses at fault. For some of the economic crimes like fraud, false bankruptcy claims and tax evasion, fines run up to Hr 850,000. In some cases the fines are not capped at all.
The deadlines for paying them are also extremely tight: instead of the current three-year term, the fine has to be paid in just six months. If you fail to pay, you still go to jail.
It’s good that business owners, CEOs and accountants at least get a choice between jail and paying large fines, while pre-trial detention is abolished altogether. It is also a good to reduce the powers of corrupt buureacrats and police to terrorize the citizenzry.
Yet accountants and other experts say there are plenty of loopholes that would allow abuse of this law by immoral businesspeople, too.
To sum it up, despite the hullabaloo around the law on “humanization of economic crimes,” too many people who should be ecstatic remain unhappy. The reason is that these laws seem badly thought out.
The government has set ambitious goals: trying to pass 21 categories of reforms in the same year. Yet the quality of decisions does not seem to be high on the agenda – and never has been, since the start of President Viktor Yanukovych’s term in office on Feb. 25, 2010.
Instead of mass-producing bad laws, it’s better to take time and do more homework, as well as involve business and expert communities to find the best solutions and compromises that will better calibrate punishment to the severity of the offense.
The nation veers between draconian punishments for unproven crimes, or allowing wholesale impunity for those suspected of serious financial crimes and worse.
