The characteristic and features of interpreting signs of actus reus of bribery mediation (p.1 of art. 291.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation)

The problems associated with framing, interpreting and applying the norm on liability for bribery mediation (Article 291.1 of the Criminal Code) become particularly relevant today. The national legislator when regulating responsibility for bribery in the Criminal Code of 1996 initially opted out of the norm, providing responsibility for bribery mediation and commercial bribery, believing that the intermediary’ acts should be qualified as complicity in bribe taking or bribe giving (commercial bribery). Now the legislator has established responsibility for bribery mediation, which considerably strengthens normative countering illegal activity of the persons promoting bribery. Therefore, such mediation is not a type of complicity in the form of aiding, organizing or abetting, but it is an independent encroachment. The legislator has considerably expanded the legal framework of responsibility for bribery mediation thereby the end of the crime is postponed to earlier stage of criminal behavior. While analyzing Art. 291.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, the author gives the criminal and legal characteristic of actus reus of the main element of bribery mediation, pays attention to a number of debatable formulations in dispositions of the norms contained in this article, reveals some theoretical and practical problems of qualification of the studied act, formulates proposals to solve them.