The powers of the public prosecutor to make persons holding elective posts in the municipal authorities responsible for corruption delicts. Part 1

This article begins the research dedicated to the powers of the public prosecutor’s office in the Russian Federation implemented within the legal mechanism of early termination of the powers of persons holding elective posts in the municipal authorities due to their corruption delicts. It is noted that a new anti-corruption legislation is forming in Russia. It regulates delicts which include those not considered as crimes or administrative offences. These delicts comprise violations of the restrictions or prohibitions, non-fulfulment of the obligations inherent to the status of the public persons and set to counteract the corruption. The author underlines the novelty of this kind of delict and its unsatisfactory regulation, and proposes to use a term “corruption status offence” to denote it. To ground the problem to determine the powers of the public prosecutor in the field, the properties of the corruption status offences are shown. For the persons holding elective posts in the municipal authorities the above delicts may not be considered as a traditional kind of offences, including disciplinary offences. The delict does not often manifest any committed corruption actions. Nevertheless the legislation provides only a single penalty - the early termination of the powers. The disparity of the offence gravity and the penalty reduces the effectiveness of the legal institution to prevent corruption. The absence of the procedure to make answer for a corruption status offence, fragmented and separate regulation of the procedure, and an aggregative nature of the term “persons holding elective post in the municipal authorities” which entails additional difficulties are noted. Proceeding to the results of the research, the author states that although the very procedure of the early termination of the powers of a person holding an elective post in a municipal authority is regulated by the local rules, the powers of the public prosecutor in the field are determined by federal laws and ordinances of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation.