The dissertation is the first in the domestic science of criminal law special complex research of bases of counteraction to illegal handling of minerals in the modern legal doctrine and the criminal legislation of Ukraine. Based on this, proposals were developed for criminal protection of minerals in Ukraine in transition to the new legislation. Crimes against the environment are socially dangerous, criminally unlawful intentional or negligent acts committed by the subjects of these crimes with the use of tools, means, sources of crimes, or with the use of the circumstances of their commission, which encroach on the relationship), which ensure the existence of a multifunctional balanced unified system of life and man and cause significant harm to these relations or endanger them to cause such harm. Every state must have effective mechanisms for the protection and preservation of the environment, which stimulate compliance, prevent future violations, and compensate for the damage caused. One of the mechanisms to ensure compliance with environmental standards is the institution of legal liability, which can actually occur and which is commensurate and adequate to the damage caused to the environment.
The study of criminal law counteraction to illegal mining as a socially and historically determined phenomenon is a complex process to study the social preconditions for criminalization of such crimes, the peculiarities of the modern concept of criminal law protection and prospects for improving the relevant rules. Under criminal law protection are measures to ensure the security of existing public relations and interests and deter citizens from criminal encroachments by defining in criminal law harmful to the individual, society and the state offenses and establishing criminal penalties and other measures of criminal influence. The negative consequences of crimes in this category lead to damage to the country’s economy and the environment in those regions where mineral deposits are located and they are actively extracted.
In the course of the research the conceptual and categorical apparatus of the criminal law policy of counteraction to ecological crimes in the sense of determining the objective side of the warehouses of illegal use of minerals and amber mining was improved. Provisions have been developed regarding the thesis on the inexpediency of combining violations of the rules of protection and use of subsoil with illegal use of minerals. The personal characteristics of the subjects of criminal legal relations under investigation in the sense of recognizing mainly group commission of these types of crimes are revealed. To this end, the paper identifies economic, legal and methodological principles of combating illegal use of minerals (Articles 240, 240-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) and the formalization of the relevant provisions of criminal law; theoretical and methodological analysis of scientific research on the state of counteraction to illegal handling of minerals (Articles 240, 240-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine); the content, nature and purpose of modern criminal law policy to combat environmental crimes in the comparative legal sense are revealed; characterized criminal offenses in the form of illegal handling of minerals (Articles 240, 240-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) as an independent subsystem in the system of environmental crimes; the objective features of the main and qualified components of the main criminal offenses in the form of illegal handling of minerals are analyzed (Articles 240, 240-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine); subjective features of the main and qualified components of criminal offenses in the form of illegal handling of minerals are characterized (Articles 240, 240-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine); the peculiarities of the characteristics of criminal-legal measures of counteraction to offenses in the form of illegal handling of minerals are determined (Articles, Articles 240, 240-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine); outlines the main prospects for improving criminal law in the field under study and proposed appropriate changes to existing legislation.
It has been proven that illegal handling of minerals is the dominant and main type of illegal use in the form of extraction, transportation, storage, processing, disposal, disposal, disposal or burial.
