Financial crime is a certain number of criminal offenses that are directly related to an infringement on the relationships established between objects of financial activity and involving the formation, distribution, redistribution and use of funds of financial resources and funds. To date, in the field of economic activity, business and entrepreneurship, there are a fairly large number of varieties of criminal acts, distinguished by the degree of damage, the direction of the offenses, the functional category and many other significant features. Therefore, their classification and responsibility for financial crimes in the Russian Federation has a fairly broad and detailed structure.
Sign of ownership
If we talk about the level of financial relations that are the object of the infringement, we can divide financial crimes into types:
- Offenses relating to state institutions, organizations, budget funds. This implies that possible incidents of embezzlement, theft, and fraud are carried out by offenders who carry out their labor activities (or indirectly relate to the state system) and abuse their official positions while in the public service.
- Offenses committed in commercial enterprises. Here, the fact of an encroachment on property of the off-budget sphere of activity, that is, small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, as well as a large corporate or holding business, is taken as a basis.
And while at the state level, law enforcement bodies in the person of auditors and controllers with planned inspections carry out systematic regulation of the processes occurring in budget organizations, then commercial enterprises often resort to the services of independent auditors or conduct internal control, although it is not always as effective as checking from the outside.
Sign of the scope of the offense
According to the Federal Criminal Code (CC), financial crimes in Russia are prosecuted and punishable by fines and corrective labor, as well as imprisonment - it all depends on the gravity of the crime. For each specific incident of a criminal nature, those responsible face the law in court. Here is the nature of the attacks, if we proceed from the scope of their distribution:
- Tax offenses.
- Securities market offenses.
- Violations in the insurance business.
- Violations in the foreign exchange market.
- Interbank fraud with cash.
- Credit fraud.
- Crimes in the sale of goods and services.
So, based on the location of specific criminal acts, you can differentiate them into credit, settlement, currency, stock, accounting manipulations of a criminal nature.
Subject sign
Another criterion for distinguishing between financial crimes by type is a specific person, towards whom a certain offense is being carried out. It has already been said that, depending on the forms of ownership, such atrocities are committed at state or private enterprises. But among other things, financial encroachments are delimited based on specific individuals whose property is claimed by attackers. What kind of faces are these? The following is a list:
- Lenders and guarantors - often legal entities (less often individuals) act as borrowers of funds to partners, parties, business colleagues, as a result of which they fall under the influence of unscrupulous entrepreneurs or scams.
- Investors, shareholders, shareholders - cases of "divorces", as they say in common people, today are also considered quite common. Small, medium and even large entrepreneurs are attracted to the “large-scale project”, which promises serious profits, and promise a considerable percentage in return for good investments. As a result, the business either burns out or does not start its functioning, and investments are not returned.
- Tax and customs are the two most ambitious areas in the direction of which attacks are carried out. How often do customs or tax officials have to deal with the illegal distribution of goods or evading businessmen from paying deductions? Daily.
Sign of affiliation
The investigation of financial crimes (both international and state, and carried out at the local level) is regulated by the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation and is currently taking on a rather serious scale. There is a whole system of bodies protecting the rights of entrepreneurs, both large businessmen and small private owners, contributing to the prevention and disclosure of such offenses. And each separate direction of the manipulations made by the attackers is punished by separate structures: tax evaders - by the tax inspectorate, budget swindlers - by the state control and audit bodies, etc. Moreover, based on the sign of the person being abused, theft, hiding , crimes are divided into:
- encroachments of payers of taxes, duties, fees, contributions;
- attacks by managers of companies and institutions;
- attacks by mercenaries in commercial or non-commercial enterprises;
- criminal activity of civil servants;
- criminal activity of persons who are parties to the obligation (debtors, policyholders, insurers, issuers, customers, etc.);
- crimes of other persons under the guise of financial relationships and professional activities.
Thus, financial crime is extremely multifaceted and complex in structure. Therefore, in view of various circumstances, forensic importance and importance can be carried by different factors and appropriate signs of classification.
Violations of the state budget
What can be attributed to unlawful financial manipulations carried out towards the state object? These may be the following offenses:
- fraud with the tax system;
- evasion of customs fees;
- evasion of mandatory targeted state payments;
- misuse of budget funds;
- fraud with subsidies, subsidies, humanitarian contributions;
- illegal loan processing;
- counterfeiting;
- illegal export of capital;
- failure to return foreign currency in the event that the actual return of finances is considered mandatory;
- legalization of illegally obtained income.
Tax offenses
Perhaps this is one of the largest segments of all financial crime, which takes place today in the world of entrepreneurship and economic activity. Such a plan of misconduct and offenses include fraud in the payment of various tax payments, as well as customs scams. In each country with a developed market economy, the range of criminal offenses related to taxation differs in some features and nuances.
In the Russian Federation, such crimes include:
- evasion of tax payments to the state budget;
- failure to provide income information to the tax authorities;
- distortion of accounting data submitted in the reporting period to the tax service;
- receiving from the state tax incentives, benefits and other subsidized payments of a fraudulent nature.
For a deeper explanation of these factors, it is necessary to consider each of them in more detail.
Tax avoidance
At this stage in the development of the entrepreneurial industry, non-payment of regular payments related to the tax system is the main type of tax violation. And this variety is represented by several basic forms. This includes the deliberate avoidance of submitting information on the company's profitability to the appropriate authorities, hiding the level of real income by making small adjustments that distort the data in the documents, as well as the use of fake documents.
Failure to provide revenue information
This category of offenses already applies to criminal offenses. The court may ultimately be fined, short-term imprisonment, or other punishment for the commission of such misconduct at the discretion of the judge. If we talk about the forms of this type of crime, then it is represented by actions expressed in the intentional change of information in the documentation through pronounced fraud, deception, fake. This, of course, is considered a more serious misconduct than mere tax evasion.
In different countries, law enforcement agencies react differently to such atrocities. In some systems of law, criminal liability comes into force for individuals and legal entities. And somewhere, the criminal liability of the latter is not allowed, but administrative is provided.
Accounting distortion
Providing financial control authorities with distorted, incorrect or incomplete information that is essential for taxation, or even allowing non-reporting of such a data plan, the entrepreneur runs the risk of being caught for criminal financial activities that involve malicious evasion of the letter of the law. Basically, such actions are often regarded by the control and audit services as an outrageous and unprincipled offense, for which, accordingly, the guilty person should be punished in the form of measures prescribed by law, depending on each specific case.
Fraud regarding benefits, subsidies, subsidies
State assistance in the development of small and medium-sized businesses is designed so that a modern entrepreneur who does not have big capital to further promote his product that is necessary and important for society will use financial assistance from the budget exclusively for its intended purpose. And in cases where a malicious violation of this very purpose is revealed, the state can bring the defendant to criminal liability. Entities acting in their own interests and wasting state property not on specified needs, but on their own, are considered financial criminals.
Personal Interest of an Official
The same applies to those representatives of bodies that contribute to economic fraud or, having learned about them, prefer to hide the fact of their discovery due to the bribe paid by the entrepreneur. The corruption of modern society exposes such situations all the time, this moment is not news to anyone. And, of course, such movements on the part of officials are also punished by criminal liability, as well as failure to collect information, incorrect calculation, non-payment of taxes by officials, violation of tax secrets by them - and so on, including blackmail and extortion.
Crimes in the part of the financial and credit system
Economic financial crimes, foreign exchange fraud and other offenses in this vein, as well as misconduct in terms of taxation, counterfeiting and embezzlement of budget funds, are prosecuted. This includes atrocities that are directly related to the encroachment on various kinds of institutions of the financial and credit system - these are banks, and insurance organizations, and those issues that affect the interests of depositors, shareholders, investors, shareholders, creditors. A similar offense plan is committed by using the financial market tools to inflict material damage on the market participants themselves and their interests.
It is worth noting that today financial and credit crimes and fraud, carried out by computer intrusion into the software of credit organizations, through the Internet network and in terms of mobile telephone communications, are widespread in this direction.