The law enforcement bodies are leaders of top charts among the biggest obstructions of doing legitimate business. This is confirmed by recent polls.
Read more in the expert commentary from ESQUIRES partner Opanas Carline for Legal Practice newspaper.
Rather paradoxically, but current business needs to be protected primarily from law enforcement bodies. This confirms the nature of customer applies over the past few years.
The tendency of opening criminal proceedings as tools of pressure on business has not changed. Searches, seizures of property and interrogations are frequently used not as a means of evidence gathering and in criminal proceedings, but as a means of creating obstacles for legal business activity.
After the seizure of computer equipment (but not the data copying), entrepreneurs are forced to fully update the material fund, to recover the lost data. Seizure of documents of current economic activity makes it impossible the implement important transactions, leads to losses. Arrests in criminal proceedings still can significantly destabilize the business.
According to statistics from the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine concerning the criminal proceedings under Article 212 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (tax evasion), in 2018 only 3.5% of criminal proceedings were sent to court with indictments acts, another 23% were closed on rehabilitative grounds.
These statistics most strongly confirm that criminal proceedings are the goal themselves. Knowing in advance about the absence of judicial perspectives, some law enforcement officers do not care about compliance with the procedures, they are not interested in obtaining admissible evidence.
Half the responsibility lies on the prosecutor’s office. Due to its fault, economic crimes are investigated by the Security Service of Ukraine, tax policemen removed from the legal framework by Law No. 1797-VIII conduct an investigation.
But the main problem is the excessive indulgence to investigating authorities by the investigating judges and Appeal Сourts.
Source: pravo.ua