Year after year, the issue of ‘pressure on business’ remains relevant. Despite government efforts to reduce administrative pressure, law enforcement agencies are increasingly used by business owners in corporate disputes. In other cases, law enforcement officials themselves exert pressure to obtain unlawful payments or take control of a business.
To achieve these aims, investigating authorities continue to seek pre-trial detention, isolating the accused from society. Business owners are then unable to manage their companies’ operations, which may subsequently lead to insolvency or the loss of assets.
Criminal law and criminal procedure establish special rules for cases involving business and other economic activities. These concern the initiation of criminal proceedings, the classification of objects and documents as physical evidence, deadlines for returning unjustifiably seized property, the use of pre-trial detention and other matters.
The historically entrenched prosecution bias in the judicial and investigative system is difficult to overcome: year after year, acquittals account for less than 1% of criminal judgments. Russia’s criminal justice system lacks genuine adversarial proceedings, and a business owner charged with an offence is, in effect, already treated as guilty with a likelihood of 99.7%.
Our team has repeatedly demonstrated its effectiveness in challenging investigating authorities, securing the reversal of unlawfully initiated criminal proceedings and the termination of cases where the elements of an offence are absent, the reclassification of charges as less serious offences, the replacement of detention with non-custodial measures and other outcomes.