Russia wants to ban suspended sentences for bribes

Russia wants to ban suspended sentences for bribes, as well as deprive those convicted of corruption of the opportunity to be released early. As Izvestia found out, such a bill will be submitted to the State Duma on March 10 by deputies of the LDPR faction led by party leader Leonid Slutsky.

In addition, the deputies propose to exclude from the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation a norm that allows fines to be applied as the main form of punishment for corruption, applying to such criminals punishment only in the form of imprisonment, as well as to increase the period of actual serving of punishment by convicted persons for these crimes.

"In 2023, the number of citizens convicted of accepting bribes increased by 13.6% compared to 2022. According to statistics from the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation for 2023, 609 convicts were sentenced to imprisonment for crimes under Parts 4-6 of Article 290 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and 128 convicts were fined as the main punishment, which totaled more than 383 million rubles," they explain. The need for tougher measures is described by the authors of the initiative in an explanatory note to the draft law, which was reviewed by Izvestia.

"Corruption needs to be burned out with a hot iron. Only the fear of inevitable and cruel punishment will stop corrupt officials. Therefore, we are introducing a bill that excludes any possibility of imposing a suspended sentence on bribe-takers. We also consider it important to deprive unscrupulous officials of the opportunity to "pay off" with a fine from the real term. If an official takes bribes, uses his power to commit dirty deeds, his place is in prison," Leonid Slutsky told Izvestia.

According to the faction's press service, today, receiving a bribe in the form of money, securities or other property by an official is punishable by either a monetary fine with deprivation of the right to hold certain positions for a specific period, or, depending on the amount of the bribe, imprisonment for a period of three to 10 years, together with a fine of tenfold up to seventy times the amount of the bribe.

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In December last year, the Kamchatka Regional Court, at the request of the prosecutor's office, replaced the suspended sentence imposed on a resident of the Khabarovsk Territory convicted of bribery with two years of imprisonment in a high-security colony.