MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law envisaging punishment from three to ten years of imprisonment for hoax phone calls with bomb threats.
The most severe punishment for this crime is now imprisonment for five years.
The new law envisages four stages of punishment depending on the gravity of consequences and danger posed by bomb threats. There are currently only two stages and there is no separate penalty for terrorizing social infrastructure facilities and government institutions.
The first stage will be phone calls made for purposes of hooliganism containing a deliberately false alert about an upcoming explosion, arson, or other actions posing threat to people’s life, infliction of significant damage, or other consequences posing danger to the public. The punishment will be a fine ranging from 200,000 rubles to 500,000 rubles or two to three years of corrective labor. In this situation, the person will not be jailed.
The second stage will apply to social infrastructure facilities. This and the following stages will envisage imprisonment for “telephone terrorists.”
If such a phone call was made communicating false information regarding a bomb planted in social infrastructure facilities, for instance, schools, hospitals, railway stations, kindergartens, banks, heath resorts, etc., the punishment will be a fine ranging from 500 000 rubles to 700 000 rubles or three to five years in prison.
The same punishment will be given if a prank call leads to the infliction of massive damage exceeding one million rubles, for instance, if an airport ceases operation due to a bomb threat, it may result in massive financial losses for the airport, airlines, and a large number of passengers.
The third stage will apply to phone calls that are aimed at destabilizing the work of government agencies, the punishment will be a fine ranging from 700 000 rubles to one million rubles or six to eight years in prison. For instance, such punishment will be imposed on people who call and report a bomb threat in the State Duma. Two such phone calls have recently been made to the State Duma.
All these three stages will apply when there have been no deaths of people, for instance, during an evacuation.
If at least one person died or other grave consequences occurred as a result of a phone call, the fourth, the toughest stage of punishment will apply.
It envisages a fine ranging from 1.5 million rubles to two million rubles or eight to ten years of imprisonment. Such a punishment will be handed down in any of the three aforementioned situations resulting in death of a person.
The law was adopted by the State Duma and approved by the Federation Council.
