The Content of the Terms "Seizure" and "Appropriation" of Another's Property as Elements of the Objective Side of the Theft

The article is devoted to the problem of clarifying the content of the concepts "seizure" and "appropriation", with the help of which the legislator determines the criminal act in the legal definition of theft referred to in Paragraph 1 of the Note to Article 158 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The relevance of the chosen topic is due to recent significant changes in the understanding of the objective side of theft. The changes were caused by the expansion of the subject matter of the crimes under consideration at the legislative and law enforcement levels. In the article, the author aims to identify the indicated changes and, with their consideration, to determine the current content of the terms in question. On the basis of the dialectical method, analysis, synthesis and specific legal methods (formal legal, historical), the author conducts a study of current laws and court practice, studies approaches to solving the designated problem in the science of criminal law. The author states that the legislator's refusal of the obligatoriness of the proprietary (physical) attribute of property as the subject of theft entailed changes in the understanding of the content of the terms "seizure" and "appropriation" during theft. The original meaning of the term "seizure", given by the legislator at the time of the adoption of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, was to simply move the stolen thing in space by the offender. In recent years, the content of the term "seizure" has become significantly wider. So, in case of theft of non-cash money their seizure is understood as writing off these funds from the victim's account; in case of theft of personalized securities and receivables seizure should be considered as signing an agreement on assignment of claim; in case of theft of order securities seizure occurs by means of putting endorsement on them. Appropriation is understood as establishment of the actual illegal possession by the offender of another's property, replacement of the owner or the legal possessor by the illegal user. A conclusion is made that seizure of another's property is inherent in any theft, since in any form theft it implies the reduction of the owner's property. However, the legislator used the disjunctive conjunction "or" between seizure and appropriation in the legal definition of theft, thus allowing for a possibility of committing theft only by appropriating another's property in favor of the offender and other persons. The inconsistency of the legal description of the objective side of theft with its real mechanism is an argument in favor of the need for a legislative reform of Paragraph 1 of the Note to Article 158 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Besides, a conclusion is substantiated that seizure and appropriation of another's property in theft can be made by inaction in certain cases.

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