2021 Issue №2

Prejudice is one of the most problematic procedural institutions. It substantiates the inviolability of the facts established by a judicial act that has entered into legal force. At the same time, the issue of the intersectoral nature of prejudice is relatively new for domestic science and requires close research, taking into account the specifics of various branches of legal proceedings. This issue is of particular importance in criminal proceedings, where the verdict can be based on the conclusions of the courts made in civil, arbitration or administrative proceedings.

This study focuses on the existing points of view in the academic papers, as well as in the law enforcement practice on application of the intersectoral nature of prejudice in the modern Russian criminal process and its limits. Comparative, analytical and historical research methods were used in the research. The author formulated the approach to solving the issue of the possibility and necessity of taking into account court decisions taken in the framework of civil and arbitration proceedings as an intersectoral prejudice in criminal proceedings. Intersectoral prejudice in criminal proceedings has its pros and cons. The institute of intersectoral prejudice in cases of economic crimes is rather special to apply and it is studied in the paper. The author considers the need for guiding clarifications of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on the issue of the possibility and feasibility, as well as the procedure for using in proving the facts established by a court decision that has entered into legal force.

The paper considers methodological aspects of profiling as an unconventional technique studied by criminology and focuses on the main fields used by profiling abroad and in Russia. The purpose of the study is to develop a methodological base with which it is possible to use profiling as a searching technique in forensic science. The study analyses similarities and differences between the compilation of a criminal’s psychological portrait and profiling. Based on comparative and retrospective analyses, profiling theoretical developments are built, as well as the main methods that make up its methodology.

The author concludes that profiling is a complex technique that synthesizes provisions from other sciences, but the synthesis takes place within the framework of the search for a criminal and his intended place of residence. The author also questions the differences between the psychological portrait of a criminal and profiling, the methods used by profiling and the portrait, as well as their objectives. The author analyzes the method of geographic profiling, as well as the possibilities of its application in domestic science and practice. The concept of diagnostic profiling and the main directions of its application are defined.

Due to the rapid criminalization of credit relations and the widespread theft of bank loans, committed mainly by groups of fraudsters, the forensic sci­ence faces a serious problem of developing an effective method for investigat­ing crimes of this nature. The method must include recommendations for identifying signs of complicity, defining the group of people involved in the theft, their arrest and proof of guilt. At the same time, the research of this kind is impossible without the study of typical groups of credit fraudsters, describ­ing their main features, forming an idea of ​​the characteristic features of their illegal activities. This research paper focuses on the ways to solve the men­tioned tasks.

In this paper, the author gives a theoretically substantiated idea of ​​the characteristics structure of criminal groups, reveals the forms of complicity inherent in credit fraudsters, united by a single illegal purpose, and also dis­tinguishes between criminal associations whose activities are in various areas of credit relations.

Using the results of the study of credit fraud cases, the author describes the main categories of credit fraudster groups, names the features of their de­velopment and functioning and identifies the typical participants. The uniqueness of this research paper is that it is first to give the typology of credit fraudster criminal groups in the context of the intra-structural differentiation of relations within which such thefts are committed. The results of the re­search are intended to enrich academic understanding of credit fraudster groups. The results of the research paper can be used for further research of similar and related issues of the investigation of fraud in the field of credit, in practical investigation of such crimes.