The criminal act of abuse of the position of the responsible person

The first two decades of this millennium in Republic of Serbia were, among the other things, marked by the overall reform of criminal legislation resulted in the adoption of the new Criminal Law. The efforts were made in order to modernize and adapt it to modern conditions, as well as to harmonize our legislation with the criminal legislation of the EU countries. The criminal offense of abuse of the position of the responsible person was introduced by the Law on Amendments to the Criminal Law in 2012 with the aim of sanctioning the corruption in the private sector. However, the widespread and vague description of this criminal act made it easier to get to a conviction, and the judicial practice often unjustifiably resorted to the qualifications under the provisions of Article 234 of the Criminal Law, respectively to the abuse of the position of the responsible person. For this reason, the legislator introduces the novel subsidiary legislation in 2016, in order to prevent easy resort to this inaction, and its implementation only in cases where no other criminal offense has been achieved.