Addressing the further improvement of Chapter 22 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: Criminalization or decriminalization?

The present article aims to analyze the amendments introduced to Chapter 22 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation by Federal Laws No. 323-FZ of July 10, 2023; No. 390-FZ of July 31, 2023; No. 43-FZ of March 11, 2024; No. 79-FZ of April 6, 2024; No. 406-FZ of November 23, 2024; No. 467-FZ of December 13, 2024; No. 510-FZ of December 28, 2024; No. 172-FZ, No. 175-FZ, No. 176-FZ of June 24, 2025; and No. 234-FZ of July 23, 2025. It has been established that the amendments introduced by these Laws are insufficient for perfecting this Chapter, as the fundamental problems of its further improvement remain unresolved. Following these amendments, Chapter 22 has been supplemented with new provisions: Article 172.4, establishing liability for "illegal activities related to the recovery of overdue debt of individuals"; and Article 173.3, establishing liability for "organizing activities for submitting deliberately falsified invoices and/or tax declarations (calculations) to the tax authorities of the Russian Federation and/or distributing them." This indicates an expansion of criminal law intervention in the sphere of economic activity, aimed at eliminating legislative gaps in this Chapter. Furthermore, the scope of Article 171.3 has been expanded-its new version establishes liability for the unlicensed production and trafficking of tobacco and tobacco products. Concurrently, the scope of other norms constituting Chapter 22 has also been expanded: the new version of Article 178 establishes liability for cartels; Articles 173.1-173.2 establish criminal liability for actions related to the illegal registration of individuals as individual entrepreneurs; and the new version of Article 187 establishes liability for "remote" theft of citizens' funds. The goal of this expansion is to eliminate legislative gaps within Chapter 22. In addition, the legislator has removed Article 200.2 from the Criminal Code, which provided for liability for "illegal import of tobacco products and alcoholic beverages into the Russian Federation from other member states of the Eurasian Economic Union." This indicates a contraction of criminal law intervention in economic activity. The aim of this contraction is to eliminate the "overload" of Chapter 22 with "duplicative" norms, as the conduct previously prohibited by this article can now be properly prosecuted under Article 226.1, which has a broader scope. Simultaneously, the scope of Article 189 has also been contracted, as its new version may now compete with Article 276.1, introduced into the Criminal Code in 2024. Despite the considered amendments, the problems of further improving Chapter 22 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation remain unresolved. This is evidenced by the analyzed shortcomings in the legislative construction of Articles 180, 183, and 189. Other norms constituting this Chapter have also been analyzed. The comparative method and analytical method were used in this analysis. The research revealed that the majority of norms constituting Chapter 22 establish criminal liability for acts that, by their legal nature, do not constitute encroachments upon the procedure for conducting entrepreneurial or other economic activity. Simultaneously, it was revealed that the legislative constructions of some of these norms are imperfect-they lack definitions for individual elements, and the existing definitions do not align with the norms of regulatory and protective branches of law. Thus, for the correct resolution of the problems related to the further improvement of Chapter 22, the author contemplates, as one direction for such improvement, the criminalization of new acts that, by their legal nature, constitute unlawful methods of conducting entrepreneurial or other economic activity. Concurrently, the author also advocates for the decriminalization of acts prohibited by the norms of this Chapter as another direction, since the socio-economic development of the Russian Federation, alongside the emergence of new unlawful methods of conducting economic activity, implies that certain acts prohibited by this Chapter may lose their public danger. Furthermore, as a direction for correctly solving these problems, the author proposes the removal from Chapter 22 of norms prohibiting acts that, by their legal nature, are not encroachments upon relations in the sphere of entrepreneurial or other economic activity-either by "transferring" them to other Chapters of the Criminal Code or by decriminalizing some of the acts they prohibit. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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