Author’s intro:  President Dmitry Medvedev recently sent a package of amendments to the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure to the State Duma. The amendments, as was announced, are aimed at the humanization of punishments for economic crimes.  For example, the amendments propose the exclusion of Article 173 of the Criminal Code regarding “false entrepreneurship,” as well as the removal of the violation of “license requirements and conditions,” and “unlawful banking activity.”   It was likewise announced that the presidential law will be adopted according to an accelerated procedure and has already now been sent out for distribution.

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If the law is adopted, then it is not difficult to imagine that the softening could also affect the former managers of the YUKOS oil company, the criminal trial in whose case has been going on for more than a year already in the Khamovnichesky Court of Moscow.

I had a discussion with the well known lawyer Yuri Markovich Schmidt about kinds of economic crimes these amendments deal with, how they were regarded by Russian courts in the USSR, and how one can assess the appearance of the new winds blowing in the legislation with respect to economic. What follows is the transcript of Yuri Schimidt’s comments to me.: