The prosecutor and the investigator: the procedural status of the pre-trial proceedings

Some changes, introduced in the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation in 2007,rendered vast influence on the procedural status of such subjects as investigative officer and prosecution attorney. Public prosecution hasactually been deprived of investigative office, and in the absence of a single coordinating centre problems in interaction of investigativeofficers of different departments will emerge, because each of them publishes departmental legal acts, instructions, which differessentially from each other and degrade criminal procedure legislature. Besides, it is not completely clear why the legislator deprivedprosecution attorney of such a function as procedural guidance of pre-trial investigation, but kept certain authoritative functions onprocedural guidance of preliminary investigation. The solution of these problems consists in creation of a single investigative agency,whose senior officer executes procedural guidance of the pre-trial investigation, criminal prosecution; a representative of this agencymaintains prosecution on behalf of the government in court (in that case prosecution attorney keeps the function to oversight theobservation of laws), or in recovery of the functions of procedural guidance of pre-trial investigation and relevant authoritative functionsto prosecution attorney. In any case, prosecution attorney should get the right of bringing a case before the court back. One of theimportant problems is the problem of restriction of procedural independence of an investigative officer, which consists in the fact thatsenior officer of the investigation agency has both authoritative functions as direct and procedural superior. A serious impact onprocedural independence of investigative officer, which brings it to nought, was made with introduction of Item 401 into Article 5 of theCriminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation. In this legal act one more participant of the criminal proceeding is mentioned onthe part of the prosecution - it is criminal investigator (although there is no corresponding Article in Chapter 6 The participant of thecriminal proceeding on the part of prosecution). Finally, a significant impact on investigative authority was made by the Federal law ofthe Russian Federation dated December 6, 2011 (№ 407 Federal Law). It mentions that the only cause for bringing a criminal casebefore the court in tax crimes is materials given by the tax department. This innovation cannot be explained in a reasonable way. Itcontradicts with the essential statement of criminal proceeding, formulated in Article 6 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the RussianFederation, - with its purpose.

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