Is joint participation possible in crimes provided for by Articles 201, 285, 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation?

Joint participation in crimes provided for by Articles 201, 285, 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is enough extended. However, there are no scientifically formulated rules of determination of participation in such crimes, because this problem has not been a separate research subject in legal literature. This article is devoted to the problem of possibility to designate joint participation in the mentioned crimes as "managerial". Absence of a definition of the group offence in the description of the reviewed articles is criticized by several authors, and it is reflected on judicial practice. Some criminal law scholars consider that joint participation in "managerial" crimes is possible, because the opposite contradicts Part 2 of Article 34 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. According to this article, joint participants are liable over the Article of the Special part of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for the committed crime without reference to Article 33 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The presented analysis of the court decisions in this research demonstrates that a law enforcer evaluates commitment of joint actions in crimes provided for by Articles 201, 285, 286 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation as joint participation in the descriptive-reasoning part of the sentence and (or) considers it as aggravating factors when imposing punishment. The authors criticize the corresponding judicial practice and make arguments for the opposite opinion, according to which joint participation in "managerial" crimes is impossible. It follows from the fact that a criminal act as a mandatory attribute of the subject of a "managerial" crime has a particular character; it means that only one person can commit this crime as a principal. Reasoning from the fact that joint participation is possible, for example, in the abuse of office, it follows criminal community is possible. Recognition of this criminal act as joint results in a strange situation: officials abuse powers of each other. However, an official may abuse only his / her powers, and cannot be a joint participant as an accomplice in abusing powers of another person. A similar conclusion is applied to the misfeasance in office (Articles 201, 285 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The authors notice the formation of a particular approach to the understanding of joint participation in "managerial" crimes in judicial practice. It is considered as a complex of several actions of different people intended for a single purpose, but, in fact, each action is an independent "managerial" crime. This recognition of joint participation in one crime by a law enforcer, but from the meaning of the law it is joint participation in several different crimes, contravenes the statements of Article 32 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation which considers joint participation possible only in one and the same crime.

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