Legalization (laundering) of criminal income as a result of modern strategic concept of public macroeconomic management: problems of legal identification

With the beginning of market reforms, the Russian societybecame aware of the danger of infusion of illegally obtained funds to the national economy. In order to combat and to identifycriminal cash flows, there was introduced Art. 174 "Legalization (laundering) of money or other property acquired by other personsthrough criminal activity" and Art. 174.1 "Legalization (laundering) of money or other property acquired through commission of acrime" to the Russian Criminal Code. Currently, the most common form of legalization is defined as the concealment or disguise ofthe true nature and true origin of criminal proceeds. In fact, under legalization one understands any action designed to disguisecriminal proceeds, deception of other persons regarding the origin of criminal capitals, the issuance of "dirty" revenues for "clean"ones. As a result of errors and miscalculations in the strategy of macroeconomic management of the modern country, a certain partof population cultivates the growing need for committing crimes with the ultimate goal of obtaining money or other property, theamount of which will be increased proportionately to the overall amount of money and property valuables in the country. The practiceof criminal cases under Article 174.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation indicates that the courts lack a uniformapproach to consideration of above-mentioned crimes and making decisions on them. As a result, different decisions are made insimilar situations. The main reasons for exclusion of crimes under Article 174.1 of the Criminal Code from prosecution, as well asfor acquittals on this category of cases, are the following: failure to establish a cause-and-effect connection between the crime andthe subsequent fact of legalization of criminal proceeds during the trial; denial of the public prosecutor to maintain the indictmentdue to insignificance of the act committed or the absence of proof of guilt of the accused parties. In order to improve detection ofthese types of crimes and investigations of criminal cases under the specified category, the author formulates the proposals that alegislator needs to provide a clear definition of "validation of ownership", to define the criteria for financial transactions and otheroperations that will differentiate the signs of legalization from disposal of the stolen property.

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