News

The Investigative Committee has analyzed the practice of appeals filed by investigative officials against prosecutor’s decisions cancelling orders to open criminal cases and returning cases to investigators for additional inquest.

Over 8 months of the current year, investigators issued 97,632 orders to open criminal cases, 260 of them were cancelled by prosecutors, that is 0.27%. The main reasons for that were different approaches of the prosecutor’s offices and preliminary investigation bodies to evaluation of the evidence and determining if there was enough reason to open a case.

In 192 cases, the investigators requested to cancel the decisions, 72 of those requests were granted (over the similar period last year 77 out of 224 requests).  Refusal of the prosecutor to grant a request cancelling such decisions is usually due to conclusions about the lack of sufficient data for opening a criminal case.

At the same time, the most of the decisions to open cases, including those following reports of crimes committed against socially unprotected categories of citizens, minors or over overdue wages, are caused by the necessity to conduct investigative operations as the most efficient form of check. Moreover, such conclusions have been many times confirmed by decisions of superior prosecutors who granted such requests.

Over 8 months of 2017, prosecutors returned to investigators for additional inquest 2,102 out of 73,587 (2.9%) cases (2,304 out of 77,075 cases over the same period last year of 3%). In most cases the reason was violations of the criminal procedure laws: mistakes in procedural documents, lack of measures taken to find out the circumstances subject to proving or wrong classification of the crime. 877 such decisions (40%) were appealed against by investigators, and in 116 cases (13.2%) those appeals were granted (935 (39%) were appealed against over the same period last year; 100 or 10.7% were granted).

Investigators often have to refuse from appealing against prosecutor’s decisions as there is not enough time under the law for agreeing the request with the superior official and for analyzing the case by those superiors to assess the reasons of the investigator. This problem is of special importance for investigative offices located far from the center of the region.

Considering all abovementioned, the Investigative Committee has prepared a bill suggesting steps to improve the procedure of appealing against prosecutor’s decisions. The bill has been sent to the RF Prosecutor General’s Office for approval.

Spokesperson for the Investigative Committee                                                                                Svetlana Petrenko