Kostrytskyi V. The criminal and legal characteristic of bribery of a voter or a referendum participant

The dissertation is devoted to the criminal and legal characteristic of bribery of a voter or a referendum participant. The paper analyses general principles for determination of criminal liability for specified socially dangerous acts. It is argued that criminalization of bribery of a voter or a referendum participant has been done in compliance with general legal principles. At the same time, a violation of certain criminal and legal principles of criminalization is recorded: gapless and unexcessive criminal and legal prohibition; specified and unified terminology; proportional sanctions and rational repressions. According to the analysis results for the regulation specifics of criminal liability for bribery of a voter or a referendum participant under legislation of foreign countries, the main characteristics of foreign analogues of the crime elements have been established, as provided by Art. 160 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, in the criminal law of individual European countries, in post-Soviet states, which are not a part of the EU. The legal elements of bribery of a voter or a referendum participant are researched. As a result, the definition of the spe¬cific object of the crime as an intermediate link between the generic and the direct object is justified. This is a slightly smaller group of values than the generic object, which is generally put under criminal and legal protection of not the whole section of the Special Part, but only a certain part of its articles. It is noted that in this case it is a question of legal values (i.e. social values that have become regulated in rules of law), which are precisely in the electoral rights as part of the constitutional rights of Ukrai-nian citizens. It is stated that the direct object of the crime provided by Art. 160 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine is fixed by the legal procedure for exercise of the voting right by citizens through the freedom of the will. On the basis of generalization of various sources of the researched issue it is noted that in Art. 160 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, there are issued three basic elements of the crimes. Based on the existing legislative examples, it is justified that the elements of the crimes provided in part one and part two of Art. 160 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine are mirrored crimes. The question of exhaustibility or inexhaustibility of the list of acts outlined by the legislator in part 1 and part 2 of Art.160 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine has been analysed in details. According to above-mentioned point, there has been formulated the author’s own legal position on this issue elaborated in the previously published papers. The issue of unlawful benefit as one of the constructive signs of bribery of a voter, a referendum participant has been considered. In order to eliminate conflict provisions in legislation and unify legal terminology, there has been proposed a new edition of the note to Art. 160 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which defines the concept of “unlawful benefit”.