Bribery of a contract service employee, contract manager, or member of a procurement commission (Article 200.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation):problems of assessing signs of corpus delicti

Abstract

The article examines the problems of regulating liability for bribery of a contract service employee, a contract manager, and a member of a procurement commission in Russian criminal legislation, and explores doctrinal approaches to the construction and application of liability for this corruption crime. The criminal law has enshrined the criminal prohibition under study in Chapter 22 “Crimes in the Sphere of Economic Activity” of the eighth section of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. This circumstance determines the main generic, group, and immediate objects and reflects the public danger of this type of crime, which consists in causing harm or threatening to cause harm to Russia’s economic activities and the state’s economic security. However, considering the essence of state (municipal) procurement, it should be noted that the public danger of this crime is optional and consists in undermining the authority of the state, causing and threatening to cause harm to the federal (municipal) budgets. The author proposes new regulatory solutions that will improve the enforceability of this criminal prohibition, deepen the differentiation of responsibility for the offense, and notes the need to include a differentiated offense in the qualified composition of the offense.