Crimes against Competition: Criminal Characteristics and Evaluation Issues

Today, the development of small business is given much attention from the public and the state. The President of the Russian Federation approved the National Competition Development Plan, which should ensure the international competitiveness of Russian businessmen. In addition, the President notes that criminal legislation should strictly respond to distortion of competition; it makes research the criminal liability of this kind of offence is relevant. Moreover, the statistic of The Federal Antimonopoly Service shows that a large number of the cases are opened on the facts of violation of the antimonopoly legislation, but only a few cases end up in court. In this regard, it is necessary to investigate the criminal law aspects of protecting competition and to understand why most of cases are not brought to court. It is important to note that competition is a complex concept which covers some branches of law: civil law, administrative and criminal law. This fact confirms the complexity of research. The object of the research is criminal law problems of competition protection in the sphere of business and other economic activities. The subject is the doctrinal developments characterizing the institution of competition; the provisions of the Constitution of the Russian Federation; the norms of the national criminal legislation protecting fair competitive relations from encroachments, which include Articles 178, 179, 180, 183 and 184 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and the materials of the law enforcement practice according to the above mentioned compositions; the norms of the branch legislation providing the freedom of economic activity and competition protection; the branch legislation in the sphere of sports; scientific publications of the Russian authors devoted to the protection of competition. In the course of this research, problematic issues arising from the qualification of illegal acts that violate the conditions of fair competition were identified. Historically and conceptually, it was substantiated to identify a group of anti-competitive crimes, which included Art. 178, 179, 180 183 and 184 articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The singling out of Article 184 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation in this group is conditioned by the commercialization of the sports industry, which more and more coincides in its essence with the entrepreneurial activity. The criminal elements of criminal encroachments on the competitive relations, criteria for the differentiation from other offenses are singled out and recommendations for the development of the law enforcement practice are prepared.