The criminalisation problems in finance and business order in Lithuanian law

ENThe current wording of the 97th Lithuanian Criminal Law still has not solved significant problems related to a clearer definition of the limits of criminal liability in relation to administrative liability. The huge scale of business activities till the pandemic situation and especially present difficult situation regarding the long term economic downturn because of the post-pandemic situation and military actions in Ukraine – all this naturally increase the risk of possible crime in finance and business order in order to survive this difficult situation. This grounds the topicality of this theme and necessity to re-examination of significant Lithuanian legal regulation. Therefore, the purpose of the research is to analyse the issues of the relationship between criminal and administrative responsibilities in the field of finance and business order and its application in Lithuanian case law. So, the tasks of the research are based on three main area of this analysis, i.e. criminal and administrative responsibilities for illegal economic activity, fraudulent and negligent accounting, and for violating the procedure for submitting financial documents and data to institutions, according to legal regulation and case-law of the Court of Cassation. The article uses basic research methods such as document analysis, systematic analysis, comparative analysis, the deduction analysis and generalization methods.The analysis of this article substantiated the incompleteness of Lithuanian legal regulation on these questions, as the problems seen in the case-law of the Court of Cassation clearly require a substantial adjustment of the criteria for delimitation of criminal and administrative liabilities, i.e. legal regulation of criminal liability for unauthorised engagement in economic, commercial, financial or professional activities requires a serious consideration of the waiver of feature "the form of a business", as well as the criminal liability for fraudulent and negligent management of accounts needs the establishment of a specific criterion defined in monetary terms, meanwhile the criminal liability for violation of the procedure for submission of financial documents and data to state institutions requires the increase of inadequately low the amounts of minimum standard of living. Keywords: financial crimes, criminal liability, administrative liability, crimes against business. [From the publication]

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