Qualification of Receiving a Bribe in the Form of a Discount on Goods, Works, or Services

The aim of the article is to solve the problem of applying Art. 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation that provides for liability for receiving a bribe. The problem consists in the fact that the bribe must have a mandatory monetary value, while bribes may be in the form of monetized services or “monetized benefits”, which include the provision of discounts on goods, works, or services. The complexity of the criminal law assessment of this type of violation of law is due to the fact that giving a bribe, on the one hand, is a formal crime and is considered completed at the time of giving a discount; on the other hand, the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation requires that bribes receive a monetary value. As a result, the current legal regulation creates a situation in which law enforcers must initiate a criminal case if there is evidence that the discount is granted with the consent of the bribe taker, while they cannot give a monetary value of the bribe until the perpetrator actually takes advantage of the privileges. In this regard, there is a need to most accurately determine the limits of surveilling the defendant’s illegal activities. In the situation under consideration, the body engaged in operational-search activities passively monitors the behavior of the bribe taker, the intent of the latter is formed regardless of the behavior of law enforcement officers, it cannot be recognized as a provocation. The operational-search features of the identification and suppression of this assault, which may affect the criminal law qualification of the relevant act, come to the fore. Guided by a combination of scientific methods such as analysis, induction, deduction, as well as systemic and formal legal, the authors come to the conclusion that the legal principles and the goals of the operational-search activities do not allow surveilling criminal activity to make the offender’s liability “more grave”. Moreover, the current norms of Art. 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and explanations of the highest court do not exclude the indicated operational-search abuses but rather create conditions for them. De lege ferenda, the law enforcer, if there is evidence of the intent of the bribe taker to take advantage of the discount and that the discount is granted with their consent or even claim, should be able to stop the criminal activity, initiate criminal proceedings and, without a mandatory monetary assessment of the bribe, hold the offender responsible under the least repressive article of the Criminal Code, and sentence the offender to a fixed amount of a fine.

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