The Legal Nature of the Institute for Recognition Assets Unfounded and Recover them into State Revenue

Abstract

The article examines the problem of determining the legal nature of the institution of recognition of unfounded assets and their collection into state income. Attention is drawn to the fact that the main reason for the introduction of the specified procedural institution into the legal system of our country is the development and creation of an effective system for preventing corruption and related offenses by persons authorized to perform the functions of the state or local self-government. At the same time, the studied procedural category can be conditionally attributed to the component of the national mechanism of fighting corruption. The author reveals the chronology of the establishment of the institution of civil confiscation of illegal assets, examining the content of the disposition of articles 233-2332 of the Civil Code of Ukraine, which were in effect in the period from March 4, 2015 to December 15, 2017, and articles 290-292 of the Civil Code of Ukraine, which were in force on 15.12.2017 year to 28.11.2019. In this part, attention is drawn to the fact that both of the indicated procedural models of civil confiscation provided for the possibility of recognizing assets as unfounded and their collection in favor of the state only in the presence of a court verdict that entered into legal force. At the same time, the reasons for the imperfection of the institution introduced by the legislator are analyzed, including the vagueness of the formulated procedural norms, their conflicting nature, the dependence of the civil lawsuit on the results of the criminal case, which in practice is carried out for an unreasonably long time. The author concluded that the institution of recognition of assets as unfounded and their collection into state revenue cannot be considered a mechanism of civil or criminal sanction, as well as a certain type of property punishment, since it does not contain its characteristic features. Instead, the investigated procedural category is an administrative and legal means of ensuring compliance by special subjects with the requirements of the legislation on the prevention of corruption, which is simultaneously endowed with signs of civil liability.