COMBATING ILLEGAL LOGGING THROUGH MEANS OF CRIMINAL LAW: ON

EXAMPLE OF KARELIA

Alexandra Shtromberg,

Petrozavodsk State University

alex.shtromberg@gmail.com

Abstract

The question of creating legislative basis for protection of forests from illegal logging has been

widely discussed in the context of criminal and environmental law. Recently, in July, 2014, a

new criminal offence of illegal timber trade has been introduced to the Criminal Code of the

Russian Federation, aimed at closing the legislative gap. At the moment, the serious crimes

undermining ecological and environmental welfare of the region are not addressed adequately.

and often petty crimes of illegal felling for own needs are disclosed, but not money laundering

networks, which undermine sustainable development of the region both from ecological and

financial perspectives. Taking the border region status of the Republic of Karelia in account, it

should be said, that prevention of illegal logging is a necessary factor of successful cross-border

cooperation.

In the paper the author will analyse the past, present and possible future of criminalisation of

illegal logging as a multifaceted crime, focusing on corpus delicti of illegal felling and illegal

logging and punishments for these forest offences. Experience of Russian criminal law will be

compared with Finnish criminal law to determine possible ways for improvement of Russian

legislation.

Keywords: illegal logging, illegal timber trade, forest crimes, substantive criminal law,

sustainable forest management

Introduction

Forests are the source of economic welfare, investment potential and sustainable development of

the Republic of Karelia, as forests cover 9539,8 thousands of hectares, that is 52,8% of the

territory of the region1. Most of the logs exported from Russia to the European Union originate

in north-west Russia and the majority of this is exported directly to Finland2. In 2013 Russian

wood comprises two thirds of all wood imported to Finland3.

Concerned about illegal logging, the Russian Federation in May 2004 announced its interest in

initiating a FLEG process for Europe and Northern Asia in collaboration with regional partners.

A FLEG preparatory conference was held in June 2005, and the ministerial conference was held

1 State report on the condition of the environment of the Republic of Karelia in 2013. Issued by the Ministry for

nature management and ecology (in Russian). P.275. URL:

http://gov.karelia.ru/gov/Power/Committee/Forest/Docum/docl_2013.pdf 2 A. MUTANEN, J.VIITANEN, A. TOPPINEN, R. HÄNNINEN, P. HOLOPAINEN, Forest Resources, Production

and Exports of Roundwood and Sawnwood from Russia. 9 Working Papers of the Finnish Forest Research Institute

(2005). 3 Metsätilastollinen vuosikirja 2013. URL: http://www.metla.fi/metinfo/tilasto/julkaisut/vsk/2013/vsk13_11.pdf

in November 2005. Attendees endorsed a Ministerial Declaration and Indicative List of Actions4.

The declaration5 emphasizes that combating illegal logging is a shared responsibility of both

exporting and importing countries, that it requires high-level political commitment and

collaboration across sectors, and that it should engage governments, civil society, and the private

sector6. At that time, according to Greenpeace, of the 20 EU member states currently believed to

be importing illegal timber, the top three were Finland, Sweden and the UK, which together

account for a roundwood equivalent (RWE) volume of some nine million cubic metres –

roughly 40% of the EU’s total illegal production and import7. Russia also takes a clear leading

position in illegal wood imports worldwide8.

Upon the time of the endorsement of the Declaration, certain conflict situations arised. In 2012,

it was revealed that in Russian Karelia "only 10 percent of the ancient trees remain standing due

in part to Swedwood’s logging activities"9. In the beginning of 2014, IKEA has had a forestry

stewardship certificate suspended, allegedly as the consequence of felling 600-year-old trees

from protected woodlands10

.

This example clearly shows that the forest certification as an economic tool has a power to

influence the forest management strategies of involved actors. However, in such cases economic

liability imposed by forest certification is not enough. The measures against illegal logging

involve a complex of legal and financial instruments.11

This paper will deal with instruments of

substantive criminal law and its potential to effectively establish criminal liability for illegal acts

comprising the term of "illegal logging".

4M.COLCHESTER, Justice in the forest: rural livelihoods and forest law enforcement. Vol. 3. Cifor, 2006.

5 For draft version of the St.-Petersburg Declaration see:

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTFORESTS/Resources/ENAFLEG_Elements_of_St_Petersburg_Declaration_

and_IAP_20_Oct_05.pdf 6 FAO and ITTO, Best Practices for Improving Law Compliance, p. 106; Nalin Kishor and Richard Damania,

“Crime and justice in the Garden of Eden”, pp. 89-108. 7 http://www.wwf.se/source.php/1120070/FailingForests.pdf

8 Illegal Logging & The EU: An Analysis Of The EU Export& Import Market Of Illegal Wood And Related

Products, p.10.URL: http://assets.wnf.nl/downloads/eu_illegal_logging_april_2008.pdf 9 IKEA Under Fire for Clearing Ancient Russian Forest. URL: http://www.forbes.com/sites/eco-

nomics/2012/06/06/ikea-under-fire-for-clearing-ancient-russian-forest/ 10

URL: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2565989/Is-Ikea-cutting-600-year-old-trees-use-flat-pack-

furniture-Swedish-giant-loses-forestry-stewardship-certificate-felling-600-year-old-trees-Russia.html 11

C.NELLEMAN, The last stand of the orangutan: state of emergency: Illegal logging, fire and palm oil in

Indonesia's National Parks. – UNEP/Earthprint, 2007.URL:

http://www.grida.no/publications/rr/orangutan/page/2881.aspx

Table 1. Measures to combat illegal logging

There is no doubt that illegal logging itself is a complex phenomenon. WWF, for instance, uses

the term “illegal logging and forest crime” to include both large and small-scale timber theft and

a variety of issues such as transfer pricing, breaching tax rules, any illegal aspects of timber

sourcing and circumvention of concession agreements through bribery or deception12

. However,

what comes first− both in physical and philosophical way - is the action of illegal logging, in

itself being a criminal offence.

The question is − where comes criminal law which aim is to guard interests of citizens? It is

widely acknowledged that the criminal justice system needs to be rehabilitated and incorporated

into any strategy to combat illegal logging13

. The substantive criminal law creates the basis for

further investigation and prosecution of crimes against forests, as well as have a potential to act

as a deterrent factor for potential criminals.

The chosen topic is of certain actuality to Finland not only because of it being main timber trade

partner with Karelia, but also because of the very same problem of revealing forest crimes. The

research concludes that some Forestry Centres seem to have a unwritten policy not to report

certain forest crimes at all14

.

Terminology

To avoid misinterpretation, terms mentioned in the paper, have following interpretation, if it is

not stated otherwise:

12

Illegal Logging in Northwestern Russia And export of Russian Forest Products to Sweden, WWF Russia.URL:

http://www.wwf.ru/data/publ/Russian_Swedish_Timber_Trade_eng.pdf 13

Justice for Forests: Improving Criminal Justice Efforts to Combat Illegal Logging. P.8. URL:

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTFINANCIALSECTOR/Resources/Illegal_Logging.pdf 14

Certifying extinction? P.6. http://www.sll.fi/mita-me-teemme/metsat/tiedostot/certifyingextinction.pdf

Illegal logging − all criminal offences, connected with timber theft, forest injury, forest revenue

crimes, illegal forest use, unlawful forest commerce, forest environmental violations, illegal

forest transport, illegal processing, illegal forest trade, which are not overlapping with related

crimes expressly stated in the Russian legislation.

Illegal felling − the illegal felling, and equally, damage to the extent of termination of growth, of

stands or of trees, shrubs, lianas, as stated in the Article 260 of the Criminal Code of the Russian

Federation.

Research background

The question of illegal logging in substantive criminal law of the Russian Federation has been

widely discussed both by specialists of environmental and criminal law, including O.L.Dubovik,

E.N. Zhevlakov, S.A.Bogolyubov and others. The phenomenon of environmental crimes are

analyzed not only by Russian legal theorists, but rapid changes in legislation and the complexity

of forest legislation makes it difficult for foreign experts to trace the amendments.

Environmental crimes are being analyzed as a complex of crimes, not followed by the detailed

analysis of certain criminal offences15

. The issue of illegal logging in Northwest Russia is

regularly raised by Greenpeace16

and other NGOs of international, national and local levels. In

Karelia NGO SPOK17

which acts as the experts and provide the updated analysis of situation

with forests in Russian Karelia. However, problems of criminal law measures to fight forest

offences are usually not discussed in the international context, and methods of comparative law

are not widespread among Russian theorists. As it comes to interest of international researchers,

most of the research conducted on the topic of illegal logging in Russia tackles the problems of

the Far Eastern and Siberian Federal Districts of the Russian Federation, not Northwest Russia.

Research questions

The overall aim of this paper is to explore the past, present and potential future of formulating

illegal logging as a separate and independent criminal offence with prospects of successful

criminal prosecution. The aim inevitably poses following questions:

−How the nature of crimes of illegal logging should be perceived in the substantive criminal law

so that to create effective basis for investigation of the crimes and its prosecution?

15

See, for example, Environmental Crime and Corruption in Russia: Federal and Regional Perspectives (Routledge

Transnational Crime and Corruption). Sally Stoecker. 16

See, for example, http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/7960.pdf 17

As described in M. TYSIACHNIOUK.Transnational governance through private authority: The case of Forest

Stewardship Council certification in Russia. P.271.

−How actus reus (action) and means rea (guilt) elements of illegal logging should be constructed

to guarantee that certain harmful actions against forests will not fall into legislative gap?

−How crimes linked with illegal forming interact with criminal offence of illegal logging and

form cumulative crime?

−What are the perspectives for giving the forest crimes status of international crimes?18

Methodology and methods

For this paper the object to be evaluated . The standard against which this object is to be

evaluated is the objective of sustainable forest management.

The historical method is used to trace the history of forest governance and mainly of prosecution

of forest crimes from the 17th century. The comparative method is used in analyzing differences

of forest crimes as stated in Russian and Finnish legislation, as well as international norms.

Qualitative methods include analysis of the statistical data as provided in METLA databases and

databases of the Ministry for nature management and ecology of the Republic of Karelia.

Interviewing is not adopted as the chosen topic tackles the theoretical questions but not issues of

criminology. The literature review method is adopted in analyzing historical and modern

concepts of illegal logging as a criminal offence.

Empirical basis

Illegal felling has been comprising practically half of all cases of environmental crimes in the

Russian Federation for last decade.

2000 2005 2008 2009 2010 2011

Environmental crimes in total 14818 33491 44883 46607 39155 29151

Illegal felling of stands 7514 14641 23802 24932 20826 16077

Destroying or damaging stands

(as a result of casual handling of

fire or other sources of increased

danger) 142 2320 3824 2461 2925 2393

1) Source: Ministry of Interior

Table 2. Statistics on environmental crimes in the Russian Federation for the period 2000-2011.

Among all the regions, Karelia is one of the regions experiencing most damage from illegal

felling and illegal logging, as stated in statistics provided by Federal Forestry Agency:

18

Following the Proceeds of Environmental Crime: Fish, Forests and Filthy Lucre, p.229-230.

Table 3. Damage from the illegal felling (in milliards of rubles) in 2010.

The following bar charts show how wide spread the cases of illegal felling are in the Republic of

Karelia. Just 59,4 % of the committed crimes of illegal felling have been solved in 2013.

Table 4 . Rate of registered and solved cases of illegal logging (first six months of years 2013

and 2014 compared)

It is planned to analyse facts and figures on prosecution of illegal felling and, in future, of illegal

logging as it is defined in the Russian criminal code. Certain categories of information are of

primary interest, that is: economic damages as the result of illegal felling (for each fact of the

illegal felling, in total), statistics on prosecution for related crimes, statistics on the number of

criminal cases brought to the courts, correlations between administrative and criminal offences in

the sphere of illegal felling.

Detailed empirical basis will be formed on the next stage of the research as it is connected with a

number of difficulties:

Table 5. Variations in statistics on illegal felling.

− variations in statistics provided in the official reports the Public prosecutor`s office of the

Republic of Karelia and of the Ministry for nature management end ecology of the Republic of

Karelia differ significantly and no unified system of statistical service exists at the moment.

− new changes to the legislation differentiating between illegal felling and illegal logging have

been brought on July, 21st, 2014, therefore, there is still no full picture of implementation of

these new norms starting with crime reports and ending with court decisions.

− the open statistical databases (see, for example, crimestat.ru) provide detailed information on

most wide-spread crimes (murders, rapes, burglary, etc) and contain no information about

environmental crimes and money laundering offences;

− this year there have been delegation of duties on forming statistics in the public prosecutor`s

offices and now there is a period of transition;

− no methodological recommendations on the investigation of illegal logging have been

circulated among the authorities of the Karelian interregional nature preservation public

prosecutor`s office, therefore, the authorities are not ready to provide information during

interviewing.

At the moment, a new unified information system on contracts with timber is being formed

according to presidential decree19

. From the January, 1st, 2015 in ЕГАИС (Unified State

Automatised Information System) the information on the factual volume of timber and its

marking will be stored, since July, 1st data on legal entities, making deeds with timber will be

compiled, including declarations on such deeds20

. However, even its enforcement is connected

with following problems: the insufficient system of illegal fellings distant monitoring, massive

19

URL: http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2578279 20

Federalniy zakon Rossiskoy Federatsii ot 28 dekabrya 2013 g. №415-FZ [Federal law of the Russian Federation

from 28.12.2013 №415-FZ]. URL: http://www.rg.ru/2013/12/30/drevesina-dok.html

tax evasion of forest enterprises, the lack of unified data on land use21

. Therefore, it is believed

that same measures inter alia should be taken regarding the statistics on illegal felling and illegal

logging as now the separate statistics show discrepancy (as mentioned above).

Therefore, empirical data analysis will comprise the next part of the research as due to recently

introduced changes to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, namely changes in sanctions

and new criminal offence of illegal timber trade, the statistics will not fully reflect the situation.

Structure of the research

Core areas of research include historical research, statistical research and research of current

legislation and policy, both national and international. These objects predetermine following

stages of research:

Stage 1. Analyzing history of legislation in the sphere of illegal logging, namely Sudebnik of

1589, Sobornoye Ulozhenie of 1649, Penal codes of 1845 and 1903,Criminal Code of the RSFSR

of 1926, Criminal Code of the USSR of 1960.

The analysis is aimed at tracing back the formation of forest protection through means of

criminal law. Studying the history of prohibition of illegal logging lets us see that forests as well

as other nature objects were protected just as the property since the first Code Prostrannay

Pravda, that is a more complex version of Russkaya pravda dated the 13th century (at that time

forests comprised feodal property) until the Soviet time (then forests were seen as a property of

the Soviet state).

The first incentive to protect forests (even though purely as an object of private property) came

in the end of 15th century, when Ivan the Third had to sign a forest protection charter

(ohrannaya gramota) which banned unauthorised felling of forest in some parts of the duchy22

.

The need for protection of forests was rising dramatically: in Sobornoye Ulozhenie of 1649 the

forest, as V.A.Manin has noticed, is mentioned in 67 articles out of 958, and illegal felling was

punished with fine23

. However, it could not change the situation as the concept of forests as a

property did not motivate its owners to see it as an exhaustive natural resource. This concept of

forest crimes remained in the end of 19th and beginning of 20th centuries, as Penal codes of

1845 and 1903 placed illegal felling in the chapter "Crimes and violations against property and

21

Ibid. 22

V.MANIN, Zarozhdenie russkogo lesnogo zakonodatelstva i proplema pravovoj reglamentacii ohrany lesov v

Rossii do konca pervoj chetverti XVIII veka [Evolution of the Russsian legislation and problems of the legal

regulation of forests preservation in Russia until the first quarter of the 18th century]. 7 Vestnik Yugorskogo

gosudarstvennogo universiteta 2007, p. 68. 23

Ibid.

income of state treasury". In the Soviet time many theorists still supposed that forest firstly is a

socialist property and therefore illegal felling should be seen as a crime against property.

However, legal theorists of that time began to view forests primarily as a complex ecosystem and

supposed that forest crimes are environmental crimes undermining exploitation and reproduction

of forests24

.

Stage 2.Analyzing the changing position of illegal logging as criminal offence in the system of

crimes as established by the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. At the moment illegal

logging is perceived as a crime against environment, with punishment for illegal timber trade set

separately in the chapter "Crimes in the Sphere of Economics".

Stage 3.Analyzing the corpus delicti of illegal felling and illegal logging in accordance with the

doctrine of Russian criminal law and in comparison with Finnish law:

−object of the crime;

−action;

−actor;

−guilt.

The comparative analysis is based on following criteria:

−variations in elements of corpus delicti (analysis is conducted in accordance with Russian

theory of criminal law);

−scale detalisation of corpus delicti;

−range and adequateness of punishments;

The analysis represented in the Table 3 is of value as Finland is among those 6 European states

that have reviewed the applicability of money laundering or similar domestic legislation to forest

sector crimes25

. WWF’s EU Government Barometer, conducted in the first half of 2014, shows

that only 11 EU countries have so far adopted national legislation robust enough to control the

legality of timber set high penalties for those breaching the rules, including Finland26

.

24

S.GAVRISH, Ob objekte nezakonnoi porubki lesa [On the object of the illegal felling of the forest], 5 Problemy

sotsialisticheskoy zakonnosti (1980). URL:

http://library.nulau.edu.ua:8088/bitstream/123456789/3065/1/Gavrish_139.pdf 25

J.HUDSON, C.PAUL, FLEGT Action Plan Progress Report 2003-2010, p.20.

http://ec.europa.eu/development/icenter/repository/flegt_ap_progress_report_2011-03-11_en.pdf 26

EU countries failing to halt illegal timber trade. URL:

http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/search_wwf_news/?226852/EU-countries-failing-to-halt-illegal-timber-trade

Illegal felling (Art. 260 of the Criminal Code of the

Russian Federation)27

Forestry offence

(chapter 48a, section 3

of the Criminal Code

of Finland)

Object of

the crime

Environment Environment

Criminal act The illegal felling, and equally, damage to the extent of

termination of growth, of stands or of trees, shrubs, lianas, if

this act takes place on a significant scale (exceeding 5.000

roubles of damage)

Aggravated criminal offence:

Section 2 − by a group of persons, by a person with the use of

his official position, on a large scale (exceeding 50.000

roubles of damage)

Section 3−committed on an especially large scale, by a group

of persons with a previous collusion, or by an organised group

Felling of a forest in

violation of a provision

or order on

improvement cutting or

regeneration cutting

Form of

guilt

criminal intent criminal intent/gross

negligence

Subject of

the crime

a sane natural person who reached the age of 16

(no corporate liability)

a sane natural person

who reached the age of

15

(corporate liability only

for aggravated hunting

crimes)

Punishment

(in brackets

punishment

s for

committing

aggravated

illegal

felling are

given )

a fine − up to 500.000 roubles (aggravated, section 2

−500.000-1 million; aggravated, section 3 − 1-3 millions),

or in amount of a wage/salary or other income of the

convicted person for a period of up to 3 years (3-4 years, 4-

5 years);

or obligatory labour for a period of up to 480 hours

(aggravated crimes are not punishable with obligatory

labour);

or corrective labour for a period of up to 2 years

(aggravated crimes not punishable with corrective labour),

or compulsory labour for a period of up to 2 years (up to 4

years; up to 5 years) with a fine in the amount of 100.000-

200.000 rubles (150.000-300.000; 300.000-500.000),

or deprivation of freedom for a period of up to 2 years (up

to 4 years; up to 7 years) with a fine in the amount of

100.000-200.000 rubles (150.000-300.000; 300.000-

500.000), or in amount of a wage/salary or other income of

the convicted person for a period of one year to 18 months

(18 months-2 years; 203 years) or without it,

(just for aggravated crimes) with disqualification from

holding specified offices or engaging in specified activities

for a term of up to three years or without it.

a fine or to

imprisonment for at

most two years.

27

The Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Translation last amended March, 1, 2012). URL:

http://legislationline.org/documents/section/criminal-codes/country/7

The translation of sanctions and of Article 191.1 was made by author of this paper.

Table 6. Illegal felling (Art.260 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), compared to

Chapter 48a, section 3 of the Criminal Code of Finland

Illegal Acquisition, Storage,

Transportation, Reprocessing

of a fortiori illegal timber

(Art.191.1)

Chapter 32, Receiving and money

laundering offences

Object of the

crime

Economic welfare

Act Illegal acquisition, storage,

transportation, reprocessing of a

fortiori illegal timber, if this act

takes place on a large scale (if

the price of the illegal timber

exceeds 50.000 rubles) or on a

especially large scale

(exceeding 150.000 rubles)

Aggravated criminal offence:

Section 2 −committed by a

group of persons with a

previous collusion

Section 3 − committed on an

especially large scale, by an

organised group; by a person

with the use of his official

position

Receiving − Hiding, procuring, taking into his

or her possession or conveying property

obtained from another through theft,

embezzlement, robbery, extortion, fraud,

usury or means of payment fraud or handling

it otherwise (see Section 1)

Money laundering − criminal action of a

person who 1)receives, uses, converts,

conveys, transfers or transmits or possesses

property acquired through an offence, the

proceeds of crime or property replacing such

property in order to obtain benefit for himself

or herself or for another or to conceal or

obliterate the illegal origin of such proceeds

or property or in order to assist the offender in

evading the legal consequences of the offence

or (2) conceals or obliterates the true nature,

origin, location or disposition of, or rights to,

property acquired through an offence, the

proceeds of an offence or property replacing

such property or assists another in such

concealment or obliteration (See Section 6)

Aggravated criminal offence - see Sanctions.

Form of guilt criminal intent Criminal intent/negligency

Subject of the

crime

a sane natural person who

reached the age of 16

(no corporate liability)

- a sane natural person who reached the age of

15

-corporations

Punishment

(in brackets

punishments for

committing

aggravated

criminal offence

are given )

a fine − up to 300.000 roubles

(aggravated, section 2 −

200.000-500.000);

aggravated, section 3 −

500.000-1 million), or in

amount of a wage/salary or

other income of the convicted

person for a period of up to 2

years (18 months-3 years;3-4

years);

or obligatory labour for a

period of up to 360 hours (up

to 480 hours;−);

or corrective labour for a

period of up to 2 years (up to

2 years;−),

or compulsory labour for a

period of up to 2 years (up to

2 years; up to 5 years)

or deprivation of freedom for

a period of up to 2 years (up

to 2 years; up to 5 years)

(just for aggravated crime,

section 3 when punishable

with compulsory labour or

deprivation of freedom) with

disqualification from holding

specified offices or engaging

in specified activities for a

term of up to three years or

without it.

Receiving offence − a fine or imprisonment

for at most one year and six months

Aggravated receiving offence (of a very

valuable property)− imprisonment for 4

months-4 years

Professional receiving offence (extensive) −

imprisonment for 4 months-6 years

Negligent receiving offence − imprisonment

for at most 6 months

Receiving violation (petty crime) − a fine

Money laundering − a fine or to

imprisonment for at most 2 years

Aggravated money laundering (of a very

valuable property or in a particularly

intentional manner)− imprisonment for 4

months-6 years

Negligent money laundering − a fine or

imprisonment for at most two years

Money laundering violation (petty crime) − a

fine

Table 7. Illegal acquisition, storage, transportation, reprocessing of a fortiori illegal timber (Art

191.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) compared to Chapter 32 of the Criminal

Code of Finland

Stage 4. Analyzing problems of law enforcement in terms of existing legislative gaps and region-

specific problems, as well as correlation of illegal logging with anti-corruption and anti-money-

laundering legislation.

Stage 5. Analyzing differentiation of punishments on the basis of more effective classification of

scale of harm and organized groups.

Stage 6. Analyzing problems of internationalization of illegal logging as a crime:

−UNODC perspective;

−FLEG perspective;

−integration of Russian criminal law on forest crimes with forest certification systems.

Theses

The theses are that:

1. Terminology should be unified. Illegal logging itself is an elusive concept defined differently

by various authors and organisations28

. Not only the term of illegal logging, but the term of

forest remains unclear in the Russian legislation. UNODC defines that “wildlife and forest”

refers to all wild flora, well as timber and non-timber forest products29

. However, certain urban

forestry with important role in the modern cities lack protection at the moment. Some Russian

theorists of law (Dubovik O.L.) agree with this concept and exclude following types of

vegetation from the definition of the object of offence, such as protective forest plantations near

railway roads, highways and channels, territories of municipal landscape gardening and group of

trees in cities and other municipalities in the territories which status is not defined as the city

forest, trees and bushes which are stockpiled for aims of timber production30

. Moreover, the term

of environmental damage as a socially dangerous consequence of forest crimes is not expressed

clearly.

2. The legislator should follow strategy either of unification of forest crime or further

specification. According to FAO, the further detalisation splits the criminal offence of illegal

logging into following subcategories: timber theft, forest injury, forest revenue crimes, illegal

forest use, unlawful forest commerce, forest environmental violations, illegal forest transport,

illegal processing, illegal forest trade31

. According to FLEG, illegal logging itself includes Illegal

logging is the harvesting, processing, transporting, buying or selling of timber in contravention

of national and international laws32

. At the moment, the legislator follows inconsequent

strategies of specifying the types of criminal offences but at the same time narrowing the

interpretation of forms of damages to the forests. As a result, a number of actions, such as

manifestations of malicious misclassification33

of timber fall into legislative gap.

28

A.OTTITSCH, A.MOISEYEV, N. BURDIN, L.KAZUSA, Impacts of Reduction of Illegal Logging in European

Russia on the EU and European Russia Forest Sector and Trade,

EFI Technical Report 19, 2005, p.16. URL: http://www.efi.int/files/attachments/publications/tr_19.pdf 29

The Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit, UNODC. URL: http://www.unodc.org/documents/Wildlife/Toolkit_e.pdf 30

T.OLENINA, Administrativnaya otvetstvennost za nezakonnuyu rubku lesnyh nasazhdeniy[Administrative

liability for illegal felling of the forest] 1 Studia Humanitatis Borealis (2013), p.158. URL:

sthb.petrsu.ru/article/genpdf.php?id=2917 31

K.ROSENBAUM, Illegal Forestry: Definitions Process, URL:

http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/j3609e/j3609e10.htm 32

EU FLEGT Facility: Illegal Logging. URL:http://www.euflegt.efi.int/illegal-logging 33

D.BRACK, K.GRAY, G.HAYMAN, Controlling The International Trade in

Illegally Logged Timber And Wood Products,

p.53.URL:http://www.unece.lsu.edu/responsible_trade/documents/2003-2006/rt03_022.pdf

3. The sanctions of substantive criminal law should itself guarantee financial compensation of

the harm, including compensations for most vulnerable groups, including indigenous peoples.

4. Introducing collective liability specially for crimes of illegal logging in accordance with the

Directive on the protection of the environment through criminal law34

.

5. Introducing the offender`s motivation for compensation of the crime by means of criminal

law. For example, Art. 199 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation clearly states that the

person who has committed for the first time the crime provided for by this Article (Evasion by a

Natural Person of Paying a Tax and (or) a Fee. − note by A.Shtromberg) shall be discharged from

criminal liability if he/she has paid in full the amount of arrears and appropriate penalties, as

well as the sum of the fine at the rate fixed in compliance with the Tax Code of the Russian

Federation. It is supposed that introducing note of the similar nature for the Art. 260 of the

Criminal Code will be an adequate way to address crimes of so-called "new year trees" (massive

small-scale violations of the forest legislation for own purposes) and act as a stimulus to increase

ecological education of the usual people and focus attention on organized forest crime.

Conclusions

The Russian criminal law should be brought in order to address effectively transnational forest

crime. Once the corpus delicti is unified with the requirements of the neighbor European

countries and international law, more effective measures in the sphere of forensic science and

criminal procedure can be created.

In order to successfully enforce changes to criminal law, the reforms in the sphere of criminal

law should go hand in hand with the development of concepts of sustainable forest management

in other spheres of legal and financial regulation.

Studying interdisciplinary links between criminal law and forest governance is a promising

direction to be undertaken. However, this stage of research needs a deeper analysis based on

solid empirical basis which can be gathered only after new changes to the Russian criminal law

(amendments of July, 21st, 2014) are implemented for a relatively long period of time.

34

Directive 2008/99/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 19 November 2008 on the protection of the

environment through criminal law, OJ 06.12.2008 L328/28–31.