Scientific Journal of the National Academy of Internal Affairs

The purpose of this paper is to study topical problems of criminal liability for declaring false information for the formulation of ways to improve the criminal law and increase of efficiency of counteraction of corruption in Ukraine. The methodology of the study is a complex of scientific methods, namely: terminological, systemic-structural, formal-logical, comparative-legal. The theoretical basis of the study is the works of Ukrainian and foreign scientists, the provisions of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses, the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to Some Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Ensuring the Effectiveness of the Institutional Mechanism for Preventing Corruption” from October 2, 2019 foreign countries used to counteract the declaration of false information and illegal enrichment. The scientific novelty of the article is that it highlights the actual problems that exist in the grounds of criminal responsibility for declaring untrue information (related to the criminalization of this socially dangerous act, its delimitation from a related administrative offense, improvement of the design of the relevant prohibition-legal norm, as well as improving its effectiveness by introducing a mechanism to counteract illegal enrichment in the form of a new criminalization of the relevant act and/or obscure mechanism of civil forfeiture of assets) and suggested recommendations for solutions. According to the results of the conducted research, the following conclusions have been formulated: 1) the validity of the criminalization of declaring false information in Ukraine and the possibility of differentiation of criminal liability for this crime, in particular by assigning certain manifestations of it to the category of criminal offenses; 2) expediency of reporting false information to corruption crimes; 3) the need to define clear limits on the occurrence of administrative and criminal liability for the actions provided for in Art. 172⁶ of the Administrative Code and Art. 366¹ of the Criminal Code of Ukraine; 4) harmonization of the provisions of Part 1 of Art. 366¹ of the Criminal Code of Ukraine with paragraph 2 of the note to the same article, as well as the need to replace the category “minimum wage” used in this article with “on-taxable minimum income of citizens”; 5) the appropriateness of securing a mechanism to counteract illicit enrichment through the recriminalization of relevant socially dangerous acts and/or the seizure of unexplained assets through civil forfeiture