Criminal Liability for Crimes Related to Illegal Traffic of Alcohol and Alcohol-Containing Products

The aim of this article is to consider the problem of criminalization of illegal traffic of alcohol and alcohol-containing products. The authors give statistics, based on which they come to a conclusion that alcohol consumption is one of the central reasons of violence and crimes. Attention is paid to the extension of the illegal market of the mentioned products. Judging from the high level of the public danger of wrongful acts related to the illegal traffic of alcohol and alcohol-containing products and the importance of this problem for the state and society, the authors draw a conclusion on the relevance of introducing criminal liability. However, they note that the current criminal law standards establishing liability for the illegal traffic of alcohol and alcohol-containing products are hard to apply, they do not overtake all potentially socially dangerous acts and need to be improved. The authors give a complex criminal law description of crimes specified by Articles 171(3) and 171(4) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, identify characteristic features of the considered elements of crime, including evaluative and blanket features ("alcohol products", "alcohol-containing products", "illegal retail", etc.). The analysis of the established legal practice allows concluding that there are essential problems in attributing exempt alcohol-containing products to food products because their attribution is beyond experts' competence, and validation of products as edible (harmless) is in the exclusive competence of experts of the Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing. The authors consider general problems of delimitation of the elements of crime under study from other crimes and administrative offenses. They emphasize that illegal entrepreneurship is doing business without registration, a form not specified in the corresponding article of the Criminal Code; consequently, if the entrepreneurial activity is not registered, it is necessary to use other articles, which in practice results in a double criminal liability, and this, in turn, violates the principles of criminalization. Considering historical and foreign experience of the normative regulation of liability for illegal traffic of alcohol and alcohol-containing products, the authors come to a conclusion that the effectiveness of measures to decrease the abuse of alcohol products in the Russian Federation and eliminate the illegal alcohol market depend directly on the effectiveness of criminal deterrence.