Unfair competition: problems of criminalization of acts and differentiation of responsibility for their commission

The subject of the study is the problems of criminalization of unfair competition and differentiation of criminal liability for its implementation. In particular, the following issues are analyzed: the current state of criminalization of acts provided for in art. 128.1, 146, 147, 180, 183, 185.3 and 185.6 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the signs of which correspond to a certain extent to the prohibitions of the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition"; legislative techniques in the design of their compositions; qualifying and especially qualifying signs, sanctions provided for the commission of crimes of the specified group; practices in the field of application of the listed articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, including in countering unfair competition. The purpose of the work is to identify the problems of criminalization of acts that have signs of unfair competition, violations of legislative technique, shortcomings in the differentiation of criminal liability for their commission, and identify ways to eliminate them. The research methodology is based on general scientific and private scientific methods of cognition, dialectical, logical, formal legal, comparative legal, hermeneutic research methods, as well as methods of legal modeling and legal forecasting are used. The scientific novelty lies in the analysis of the problems of constructing the elements of crimes provided for in art. 128.1, 146, 147, 180, 183, 185.3 and 185.6 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation as a whole and in connection with their content with violations of the prohibitions contained in Articles 14.1-14.8 of the Federal Law "On Protection of Competition", proposals on criteria for criminalization of acts, research qualifying (especially qualifying) signs and sanctions as means of differentiating criminal liability, as well as in proposals for their improvement. The conclusions are based on the absence in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation of a clear mechanism for protection against unfair competition, ideas about changing legislation aimed at establishing specific grounds for criminal liability for unfair competition, unification of qualifying signs and the proposal as a sanction of penalties and their sizes uniform for the entire group of criminal forms of unfair competition, as well as the extension to crimes, provided for in Articles 180, 185.3 and 185.6 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the institution of confiscation.