The Verkhovna Rada agreed on the idea of creating the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine

What will the successor of the tax police do according to the project # 3087-d

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine adopted as a basis the draft Law of 02.07.2020 No. 3087-d "On the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine", which provides for the creation of a new law enforcement agency instead of the tax police.

The document, which was supported by 245 people's deputies on September 3, 2020, establishes the status of the Bureau as a state law enforcement body, which is designed to prevent, detect, suppress, investigate and solve criminal offenses, its tasks, powers and the basis for organizing activities.

Also, the bill proposes to amend forty other legislative acts, including the Code of Administrative Offenses, the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Code, the laws "On Operational Investigative Activities", "On Banks and Banking Activities", "On the Prevention of Corruption", “On the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court”, “On the Judicial System and the Status of Judges”, “On the State Bureau of Investigation”, “On the National Police”. In these normative acts, "bodies exercising control over compliance with tax legislation" are replaced by "bodies of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine".

The jurisdiction of the Bureau of Economic Security is determined by the sphere of ensuring the economic security of the state, which, in turn, is implemented through comprehensive counteraction to criminal offenses that carry a significant negative impact on the national economy, contributing to its shadowing, capital flight and other negative phenomena that slow down economic growth and threaten national interests in the field of economics (article 4 of the draft).

As conceived by the authors of the legislative initiative, the Bureau may include departments of detectives, inquiries, information and analytical, operational and technical and other departments. The maximum number of employees of the central office and territorial administrations is proposed to be set at the level of 4 thousand people (Article 12). The director of the institution must be appointed and dismissed by the President (Art. 13).

Among the powers of the Bureau (Art. 8) are the conduct of Operational Investigative Actions and preliminary investigation, the search for persons hiding from the investigation and the court, the storage of money and other property that has been seized.

The information capabilities of the new body should be ensured by direct access of the Bureau to the data of state electronic information resources and automated information and reference systems, registers and banks and databases, the holder of which is other state bodies (Article 7). In particular, the Bureau will interact with the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine and will have direct access to the unified state information system of the State Financial Monitoring Service. Likewise, the Bureau must have access to the automated information and reference systems, registers, banks and databases of the National Securities and Stock Market Commission.

The project determines the investigative jurisdiction of detectives from the Bureau of Economic Security in the updated Part 3 of Art. 216 of the Criminal Procedure Code. As a general rule, they will carry out pre-trial investigation of criminal offenses provided for in Articles 204, 205-1, 206, 212, 212-1, 218-1, 219, 220-1, 220-2, 222, 222-1, 222- 2, 223.1, 223-2, 224, 229, 231, 232, 232-1, 232-2, 233 of the Criminal Code.

By the way, the new article 222-2 of the Criminal Code establishes liability for VAT fraud. Its disposition is defined as "theft or seizure of budgetary funds by receiving budgetary refunds or submitting an application for the return of the amount of budgetary refund based on the presentation of deliberately false information, including as a result of using a deliberately forged document."

It is also interesting that by the decision of the Director of the Bureau, agreed with the prosecutor, the Bureau of Economic Security will have the right to demand from other law enforcement agencies operational-search cases and criminal proceedings concerning criminal offenses, both attributed by law to the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine, and other criminal offenses, which do not relate to his jurisdiction, but can be used to prevent, identify, suppress and disclose criminal offenses attributed by law to his jurisdiction.