Question of criminal liability and prevention of corruption criminal offenses in provisions of separate international documents

Abstract

The article deals with the issues of criminal responsibility and prevention of corruption criminal offenses in the provisions of separate international documents – conventions, resolutions, declarations, model codes and so on. It is established that the main international documents, regulating the issues of international cooperation of different countries of the world in the field of criminal responsibility and prevention of corruption criminal offenses, were approved between 1975 and 2010, but only some of them were ratified by Ukraine.

Considering the importance, adherence to principles, practical significance or unexploredness of certain international anti-corruption instruments for criminal law and criminology in a comparative legal context, the following scientific studies were elaborated: the Inter-American Convention against Corruption 1996 (Aadopted at the third plenary session of the Organization of American States); the United Nations Declaration against Corruption and Bribery in International Commercial Transactions (1996); the Model Law on Combating Corruption (Adopted at the 13th plenary session of the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of States, 1999); the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000); the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption (2003); The United Nations Convention against Corruption (2003); the Arab Anti-Corruption Convention (2010).

It is established that in some international anti-corruption conventions the concepts of «corruption» and «bribery» are distinguished from each other, and in others it may be stated that such forms tantamount to deeds of corruption or acts of corruption; in certain conventions, the issue of criminal responsibility for corruption criminal offenses is regulated more broadly than the issue of preventing it, while in others it is narrow; in practice, it is difficult or virtually impossible to establish, for all states and international communities, the definition of corruption criminal offenses and their list; problematic is the inaccurate, inconsistent and rudimentary terminology used in a number of conventions, as well as their incorrect translation into Ukrainian.

Concerning the prevention of corruption criminal offenses, the problem in international legal documents is: the existence of the possibility of making reservations; lack of mechanisms to effectively monitor the implementation of convention provisions and control compliance with their requirements; focusing primarily on the prevention of graft and bribery instead of other corrupt practices; the narrowness of the circle of parties to the conventions, to which not only states, but also international organizations should contribute, and so on.