Use of the Potential of Operational-Search Activities in Solving Problems Stages of Initiation of a Criminal Case: Problemic Issues of Theory and Practice

Relevance. The article examines the main stages of the transformation of the legal model for initiating criminal cases on tax crimes, analyzes the changes introduced by Federal Law No. 51-FZ of 09.03.2022, returning a special “tax” reason to Article 140 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation and adjusting the procedure for considering reports about the crime of the group in question. The problematic issues in the field of interaction between the preliminary investigation bodies and tax authorities in the course of identifying tax crimes and collecting the necessary evidence of the taxpayer's guilt are summarized.
The purpose of this study is to study topical issues of improving the procedural form of receiving and verifying reports of crimes in the context of traditional approaches to tax administration.
Objectives: analysis of the updated norms of tax and criminal procedural legislation, conceptual theoretical provisions that reflect the existing problems and contradictions in the legal regulation of the "tax" reason, its use in criminal procedural proof at the initial stage of the criminal process; development of proposals for optimization of criminal procedure legislation.
Methodology. When writing the article, the method of legal modeling, as well as logical, statistical, historical, comparative legal and other methods were used.
Results. The results of the study demonstrate the problems of legal regulation of the new procedure for initiating a criminal case on a tax crime and made it possible to formulate proposals for its improvement.
Conclusion. Based on the results of the study, the author states a change in the legal model for initiating criminal prosecution of unscrupulous taxpayers, when the effectiveness of solving crimes is replaced by a risk-based approach in the field of detecting tax crimes. It demonstrates the lack of common views in the assessments of such innovations, taking into account the existing experience of applying such a procedure in 2011-2014, a contradictory understanding of the role of tax audit materials in shaping the reason and grounds for initiating a criminal case, which makes it difficult to successfully use the results of tax control in criminal procedural proof.

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