Problems of application of administrative responsibility to business entities in Russia

It is over 10 years that Russia has been applying RF Code on administrative law breaking. Codification of statutes on administrative breaches at the Federal level in the Russian Federation has become a significant achievement of the national law system. The subject of research is the sphere of the entrepreneurs’ administrative responsibility. The relevance of the topic is witnessed by numerous efforts made to optimize the state’s controlling, supervising and permitting activity in relation to entrepreneurs in order to exclude an excessive pressure on business. Results of sociological poll of over 120 companies are used in the research. The following most urgent problems connected with bringing juridical persons and individual entrepreneurs to administrative responsibility have been revealed: difficulty with appealing against the results of administrative punishment to the higher authorities; inadequacy of the kind and severity of punishment to the degree of significance of the administrative breach; covering up information about the results of hearing the administrative law breaking cases by authorities; absence of uniform practices of bringing to administrative responsibility; no guaranties to reduce (mitigate) punishment, even if the lawbreakers have pleaded guilty and have taken measures to avoid repeating torts in future. The article suggests a mechanism which, if implemented, will promote an annulment of harmful consequences of the committed law violations and the prevention of their committing in future. It includes proposals to increase effectiveness of bringing subjects of entrepreneurship to administrative responsibility, and, at the same time, to exclude putting pressure on business by creating a mechanism of appeal against the administrative cases judgments, by creating transparency of administrative cases hearings, and by working out the above mentioned jurisdiction in detail.