"Artificial Thefts" in the Russian Case-law (Referring to Articles 159 and 160 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code)

This research work is dedicated to studying such phenomenon of the Russian law enforcement practice as "artificial thefts" in order to elaborate ways of predicting and minimizing it. We have studied main forms of "artificial thefts" — wrong qualification which takes place in the situation when some criminal actions are mistakenly qualified as thefts without necessary background. This work concentrates on problems of delimitation of crimes that are described in the articles 159, 160, 196 and 199 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. To achieve the main goal of this work we have comprehensively analyzed the doctrinal sources, material and procedural legislation, court practice, as well as conducted a survey among legal experts in economic crimes in order to obtain the empirical data. This study reveals the initial causes of "artificial thefts" phenomenon, formulates the rules of delimitation between thefts and other economic crimes and offers the ways of improvement of the Russian criminal legislation.