Abstract:
The article is dedicated to the analysis of debatable issues related to the interpretation and application of Art. 201-1 of the Criminal Code
of Ukraine «Movement of timber or lumber of valuable and rare species of trees, unprocessed timber, as well as other timber prohibited for
export outside the customs territory of Ukraine across the customs border of Ukraine outside customs control or with concealment from
customs control».
Main attention has been drawn to the issues of: legislative description of the elements of this crime; the need to solve the problem
of arbitrariness of quantitative characteristics of indicators of large and especially large size, prescribed by this article of the criminal law; systemic
and legal inconsistency of the provisions of the study ban with other provisions of current legislation, in particular Article 246 of the Criminal
Code of Ukraine «Illegal felling or illegal transportation, storage, sale of forest»; inadequacy and unjustified severity established in the sanctions
of Art. 201-1 of the Criminal code of Ukraine of punishments, which do not correspond to public danger of the corresponding encroachments.
A presumption has been offered that the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine should make a decision as soon as possible on the recriminalization
of the “commodity” smuggling and on the resumption of the closest to the original version of Art. 201 of the Criminal code of Ukraine, within which
criminal liability for smuggling of wood has to be regulated as well.
It is generally concluded that when deciding on criminal liability for timber smuggling, parliamentarians had not decided on the optimal way to reflect this largely approved initiative in the normative material. Ways to eliminate the identified shortcomings of the analyzed norm of the criminal law have been offered, which will allow to increase the efficiency of the mechanism of criminal law counteraction to timber smuggling.
