Differentiation of Criminal Responsibility for Petty Commercial Bribery
In 2016, criminal liability for commercial bribery and bribery of an official in the Russian Federation was mitigated: the norms providing for liability for these acts with mitigating circumstances were included in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation The legislator provided for a small amount of illegal remuneration as such a mitigating circumstance. In this paper, the authors do not aim to criticize the need for such a legislative decision, but it’s very implementa- tion is subjected to criticism in relation to the rule on petty commercial bribery. In the opinion of the authors, the differentiation of responsibility for small commercial bribery (Article 204.2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) was ill-considered in contrast to the differentiation of responsibility for commercial bribery (Article 204 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). In this regard, in the practice of applying these norms, questions arose, which had to be answered by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in the corresponding resolution of the Plenum. This authors assess the public danger of aggravating circumstances provided for in the article on commercial bribery. On this basis, in order to differentiate responsibility, it was proposed to add a number of aggravating circumstances to the article on petty commercial bribery.